Fifty-two percent of people surveyed say President Donald Trump’s response to the Charlottesville violence was insufficient. | Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Poll: Most Americans think Trump's response to Charlottesville not enough

Most Americans think President Donald Trump’s response to the white supremacist rally that turned violent in Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend was not strong enough, according to a new Marist poll.

Fifty-two percent of people surveyed said Trump’s response to the violence was insufficient, while 27 percent said his reaction was strong enough and 21 percent were unsure.


The poll was conducted on Monday and Tuesday, so at least some respondents were surveyed before Trump made further remarks about the event at a freewheeling news conference in New York on Tuesday afternoon.

The gathering of white supremacists and neo-Nazis on Saturday turned deadly when a car plowed into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing a woman and injuring 19 other people.

The president’s initial response, in which he condemned violence on “many sides,” was widely panned as inadequate because he failed to call out white supremacists directly, so he followed up with a statement Monday doing so. But he prompted another firestorm of criticism on Tuesday when he again blamed “both sides” and suggested that the white supremacist protesters included some “very fine people.”

Approval of the president’s response varied significantly along partisan lines. Just 10 percent of Democrats said Trump responded to the episode strongly enough, while 79 percent said he did not. Fifty-nine percent of Republicans, meanwhile, said the president’s response was strong enough, and 19 percent said it was insufficient.

Among independents, 52 percent said Trump’s response was not strong enough and 30 percent said it was.

Thirty-one percent of white respondents said Trump reacted strongly enough, while 46 percent said he did not. Seventy-seven percent of African-Americans surveyed said the president’s response was inadequate, compared with 13 percent who said it was enough.

The poll’s sample size was 1,125 people, who were surveyed by landline and cellphone. The poll had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.