Washington Post-UMD Poll: Three Years After Jan. 6 Riots, Republicans Remain Loyal to Trump

Nearly three years after rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol in a deadly attack, Republicans remain loyal to former president Donald Trump, and are more sympathetic to the rioters than are Democrats and independents, according to a new Washington Post-University of Maryland poll.

The poll gave a snapshot of the American public’s views on several hot-button issues, leading into the 2024 primaries and the presidential election.

Republicans are less likely to believe Trump bears responsibility for the 2021 attack than they were in a December 2021 Post-UMD survey, and are slightly less likely to view President Joe Biden’s election as legitimate than in 2021.

The current poll finds a 56% majority of Americans say Trump is “probably” or “definitely” guilty of a criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results through false claims of voter fraud, including 40% who believe he is definitely guilty. 

Nearly 9 in 10 Democrats believe Trump is guilty, while nearly 7 in 10 Republicans think he is innocent. Among independents, nearly twice as many think Trump is guilty as think he is innocent.

“Differences between the youngest and oldest age groups stood out in this survey,” said Professor Michael J. Hanmer, director of UMD’s Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement, who helped to design the poll. “For example, 25% of 18-to-29-year-olds said Trump bears a great deal of responsibility for the January 6 attack on the Capitol, compared to 50% of those aged 65 and older. Interestingly, there are wide differences by age even among Democrats, with 50% of 18-to-39-year-old Democratic leaners saying Trump bears a great deal of responsibility for the attack, compared to 86% for Democratic leaners aged 50 or older.”

As primaries approach and Trump leads the Republican field for president by a wide margin, the poll sheds light on several timely issues, including:

• More than one third of Americans said Biden’s election was "illegitimate." Older Americans are slightly more likely than younger ones to say Biden was legitimately elected, as are Americans with college degrees.
• Slightly fewer Republicans now say Jan. 6 protesters were “mostly violent” than they did in 2021.
• The new poll finds that 55% of Republicans think legal punishments for the people who broke into the Capitol have been “fair” or “not harsh enough”; that is down slightly from 64% in 2021. Seven in 10 independents and about 9 in 10 Democrats say punishments have been fair or insufficient.

Read the Full Story in The Washington Post

The Post and the CDCE conducted this poll Dec. 14-18 among a random national sample of 1,024 U.S. adults through NORC at the University of Chicago’s AmeriSpeak Panel. It has an error margin of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points for the full sample. 

Photo illustration via iStock.

Published on Tue, Jan 2, 2024 - 3:15PM