The FBI raid on Mar-A-Lago has likely made former President Donald Trump more popular in the GOP, according to reports. He is sure energize his supporters by using the intense investigation and raid on the residence. According to a new Morning Consult/Politico survey conducted after the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s raid of his Mar-a-Lago home, it is working with Republicans, but much of the broader electorate isn’t buying his claims of a political “witch hunt.” Roughly 3 in 5 GOP Voters now say they’d vote for Trump in the 2024 Primary. If the 2024 Republican primary were held today, the share of Republican voters who said they would vote for former President Donald Trump, said Morning Consult.
Here are Trump’s 2024 standings after the FBI raid:
– In the August 10 survey, it was the highest on record since his 2020 loss, 58% of Republican voters said they would support Trump if the 2024 Republican presidential primary were today
– Trump’s improvement has come to the detriment of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose 2024 support has slumped 5 percentage points since late July, to 16%
– Similarly, a record-high 71% of GOP voters say that Trump should run for president in 2024.
By the time of the survey, three in four voters said they had seen, read, or heard at least something about the FBI’s raid, with little variation by political affiliation.
Most voters (54%) aligned with reporting that the search was related to mishandling of classified information, compared with 32% who thought it was related to Jan. 6 and 14% who said it was “something else.”
Including 81% of Democrats and 48% of independents, about half of voters, which is 49%, said the search of Trump’s property was primarily due to evidence that he committed a crime. 4 in 10 voters (39%) roughly, driven by 69% of Republicans, said investigators were motivated to damage Trump’s political career.
58% think Trump broke the law while he was president, including 90% of Democrats, 59% of independents and 24% of Republicans, so voters are generally inclined to believe Trump is a criminal. Voters approved of the search by a 12-point margin (49% to 37%), while House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has vowed to probe the FBI in retaliation for the raid. And 62% of Democrats say it was not an abuse of power, while 63% of Republicans say the raid was an abuse of power that should be investigated. Narrowly, independents were more likely to say that the raid was not an abuse of power than to say it was, 42% to 35%.
Acting on a warrant reportedly related to a probe involving Trump’s handling of top secret documents, the FBI’s activity in Palm Beach provided a dramatic picture of the unprecedented examination of a former president by federal, state, and local investigators on the civil and criminal front. Trump called the FBI’s search in a statement an act of “political persecution” and a “Witch Hunt” designed to harm his political movement.