Poll finds Christians less likely to see Trump’s trial-related actions as immoral
Majority still condemn Trump’s behavior, split over whether he committed crime
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About two-thirds of America adults, including those of each of the major religious subgroups, believe that Donald Trump’s actions detailed in his New York hush-money trial were immoral. But there was a religious divide in the survey results: Christians (specifically, Protestants, Catholics and Latter-day Saints) are somewhat less likely than those in the population as a whole to agree that Trump’s actions were morally wrong.
Furthermore, atheists and agnostics (considered as a single group) were the most likely to condemn Trump’s actions as morally wrong.
Results of the poll were released yesterday by 19th News/SurveyMonkey, which analyzed the results of answers by 5,893 people who participated in an online panel on May 30-31, shortly after the verdict, in which a New York jury found Trump guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. The records are related to Trump’s attempts to conceal hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, who claimed that she had had a one-night sexual encounter with Trump, who was married at the time, in 2016. Although Trump denied Daniels’ allegations outside court, he did not contest them before the jury.
Although SurveyMonkey operates polls in which most participants are self-selected, it claims “a modeled error estimate of 1.5 percentage points” because of the way its sample is mathematically balanced according to its demographics.
The results of the poll based on religion were published by the Religion News Service based on data that SurveyMonkey had provided it.
Here’s the RNS breakdown of positive answers to a question on whether respondents thought Trump’s actions were morally wrong, regardless of whether the verdict was legally correct:
Atheists and agnostics, 88 percent
Jews, 73 percent
“Nothing in particular,” 72 percent
Catholics, 63 percent
Protestants, 61 percent
Latter-day Saints, 59 percent
The analysis did not distinguish between evangelical Protestants and mainline Protestants, the second of which would probably be more likely to find Trump’s actions immoral.
Smaller percentages said they believe Trump committed a crime:
Atheists and agnostics, 86 percent
Jews, 63 percent
“Nothing in particular,” 63 percent
Catholics, 54 percent
Protestants, 48 percent
Latter-day Saints, 39 percent
The results of the poll strongly suggest that people’s views on what constitutes immorality are more dependent on political affiliation than religious affiliation. The partistan differences in perspective were stark: The vast majority of Democrats, 92 percent, said they saw Trump’s actions related to the trial as immoral, while only 40 percent of Republicans did.