New York Times poll finds MAGA still loves Trump despite legal woes, Hispanic support remains strong

The New York Times, the world’s newspaper of record and a vocal of former President Donald J. Trump conducted a poll, which found that despite his recent legal woes, MAGA supporters have not wavered their support of him.

“The American public’s views of former President Donald J. Trump have remained remarkably stable across a number of different measures in recent months, even as he faces multiple investigations and as he remains a central figure in the midterm elections, according to the most recent New York Times/Siena College poll,” the newspaper reported on Thursday.

The poll found that Trump voters held the same perspectives and feelings on Trump from earlier in the summer, and considerations about whether the former president possibly committed federal crimes was irrelevant to their support in a potential 2024 Trump-Biden rematch.

The poll also found that the gains Trump made among Hispanic voters in 2020 from Democrats has remained strong. The NYT poll determined that Republicans have maintained the same support among Latino voters, especially young Hispanic men by a margin of five points.

One 34-year old Latino delivery driver from Amarillo, Texas who was interviewed told the paper that although he voted for. Both Democrats and Republicans in the past, he would most likely vote for Trump in 2024.

“I don’t know too much,” Antonio Chavez told the newspaper. “When the race starts getting closer, I’ll start paying attention, but right now he’s just at the forefront for me. “I have a few reservations about supporting him because of the document issue, but I like to see what the other side is going with.”

The Times conceded that 44% of voters still had a favorable view of Trump and 53% had an unfavorable view with 44% very unfavorable, and 23% very favorable.

That poll, the newspaper said was conducted even after news broke about the U.S. Dept. of Justice’s raid on Mar-a-Lago and New York Attorney General Letitia James announced she was suing Mr. Trump, his businesses and three elder children.  

According to the Times, the former Republican president’s support has essentially been “unchanged” since the outlet’s previous poll in July, which was conducted during House committee hearings focused on the January 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol.

“The public’s view of Mr. Trump’s fight against the election results also remained largely unchanged, with 54 percent in the most recent survey saying his actions posed a threat to democracy and 38 percent saying he had just exercised his right to contest the election,” the Times wrote.

Despite the newspaper’s usual left leaning audience, it reported that about half the voters polled said they thought Trump had committed “serious federal crimes,” while 38% did not.

“Mr. Trump has often boasted about the loyalty of his supporters. That loyalty has long been clear in his favorability ratings, which remained stable throughout his time in office, even during moments of peak turmoil, such as his first impeachment trial. His approval ratings rose briefly as Covid-19 started to spread in the United States in spring of 2020, but by May his support had returned to previous levels,” the Times wrote.

The Manhattan based newspaper, which was founded in 1851 by Republican abolitionists is one of the president's strongest critics, especially on its editorial page. 

On Jan 1. 2022, the Times published a scathing editorial titled, 'Every Day is Jan. 6 Now' in which it argued that "things are far from normal. Jan. 6 is not in the past; it is every day... It is Donald Trump who continues to stoke the flames of conflict with his rampant lies and limitless resentments and whose twisted version of reality still dominates one of the nation’s two major political parties."

However, in this poll, the Times highlighted the fact that many of the former president’s major policies have remained popular among his supporters and even the general public.

The paper said that half of those polled said they still supported the U.S. government building a wall along the U.S. southwest border to act as a barrier to migrants coming into the country illegally from Mexico. Most surprising, 15% of those were Americans who support Trump’s wall were among Biden voters.

The majority, the Times said, agreed more with the current Republican position on illegal immigration than current Democratic policies.

It is currently unknown if Trump will actually run for president again in 2024. In a possible rematch with Biden, only 45% of those polled by the NYT said they’d support Biden verses 42% who would vote for Trump—a shocking slight 3% gap by what is often considered by conservatives to be a far liberal source of news.