Half of New Hampshire voters surveyed in a poll released Tuesday supported Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows’ ruling that President Donald Trump is ineligible for the ballot here, but a majority also felt that partisan politics played a role in the outcome.
The University of New Hampshire survey comes exactly two weeks before that state’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary on Jan. 23. It is also the first poll to ask voters anywhere directly about the ruling last month from Bellows, a Democrat who made Maine the second state to disqualify Trump days after a similar decision from the Colorado Supreme Court.
Bellows is the only secretary of state to make such a decision so far, thrusting her into the national spotlight on the deeply divisive issue of whether Trump’s incitement of the Capitol riots on Jan. 6, 2021, amounts to engaging in insurrection. That would disqualify him from the presidency under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
While 50 percent of those surveyed in New Hampshire said they either strongly or somewhat supported the secretary of state’s ruling to just 42 percent saying they opposed it, 54 percent said partisan politics had either a lot or some effect on the ruling.
Partisans in Maine’s neighboring state divided sharply, with 87 percent of Democrats supporting the decision and 83 percent of Republicans opposing it. Among independents, 50 percent of those surveyed opposed it to just 40 percent backing the secretary of state’s move.
Bellows will not have the final decision on Trump’s eligibility for the Maine ballot. A state court will decide by Jan. 17 on his appeal of Bellows’ ruling. The last step will be in the U.S. Supreme Court, which is hearing the former president’s appeal of the Colorado decision on Feb. 8.
In the meantime, Trump’s name will appear on the first round of primary ballots being mailed to military and overseas voters on Jan. 20. If the former president is deemed ineligible after that, Bellows is required by law to instruct local clerks to not count the votes cast for Trump.
The UNH poll also showed Trump losing ground to former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley after holding healthy leads in the early-voting state for months. The former president had support from 39 percent of likely Republican primary voters to 32 percent for Haley. Others lagged far behind, including former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at 12 percent.
Haley seems to have supplanted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as Trump’s biggest rival for the nomination. But the former president remains the clear favorite for the nod with a 52-percentage-point lead in national polls, according to Real Clear Politics averages. Trump also leads by more than 30 points in Iowa, which will caucus on Monday.
The UNH survey of 1,864 members of a research panel was conducted online between Jan. 4 and Jan. 8. The margin of error in the overall survey is 2.3 percentage points.