Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a 2024 campaign rally in Waco, Texas March 25, 2023.
Susanne Cordeiro | AFP | Getty Images
A majority of Americans believe Donald Trump should be barred from running for president again if he faces criminal charges in one of the numerous federal and state investigations he faces, a new one Quinnipiac University survey found.
The poll found that 57% of respondents said Trump should be barred from seeking the White House if they face criminal charges, compared to 38% who said they should not be prohibited from doing so.
Despite this, Trump saw relatively strong support among Republicans and Republican-leaning voters in the Quinnipiac poll.
A majority of that group said they would vote for him in a GOP primary, by a 10 percentage point margin over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the only other Republican to register anywhere near significant support. DeSantis has signaled that he may run for the presidency, but has not launched a campaign yet.
Republicans and Republican-leaning voters also believed, by a large majority of 75% to 23%, that Trump should not be barred from running for the presidency if he faces a criminal indictment.
Among Democrats, 88% said charges should disqualify him. Fifty-five percent of independent voters agreed that such charges should prevent Trump from running.
The survey surveyed 1,788 adults over the past week. It had an error rate of 2.5 percentage points.
Trump announced his candidacy for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination in November.
He is being criminally investigated by a Justice Department special counsel in two separate investigations and by local district attorneys in New York and Georgia.
In the Manhattan DA’s case, Trump is being eyed in connection with a hush money payment his then-attorney and fixer Michael Cohen made to porn star Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 presidential election.
Trump is being investigated how this payment to Daniels was classified by the Trump Organization in their business records. It reported its reimbursement to Cohen for the payment as “legal expenses.”
The Quinnipiac poll found that 55% of voters said these allegations were very serious or fairly serious, while 42% said they were not serious or not too serious.
A solid majority of voters, 62%, supported the idea that the Manhattan Inquiry was primarily politically motivated.
Trump himself has claimed that DA Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, has a political agenda in pursuing the investigation.
One of the DOJ probes is investigating Trump over his efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden.
The other Justice Department investigation is into Trump’s refusal to return government documents, some of which are top secret, after he left office.
In Atlanta, the Fulton County Attorney’s Office is investigating Trump for possible illegal interference in that state’s 2020 election by pressuring Georgia election officials to reverse Biden’s victory there.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing.
Source : www.cnbc.com