Given “what we know about the ongoing investigations into Donald Trump,” a slim majority of registered voters (51%) now believe he should “not serve as president in the future,” according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll.
Only 35% of voters believe Trump should be allowed to serve again. The rest (14%) do not know.
The survey of 1,566 U.S. adults was conducted from Sept. 23 to 27, immediately after New York State Attorney General Letitia James filed a sweeping lawsuit accusing Trump and three of his children of fraudulently overvaluing his assets with billions of dollars “on favorable financial terms” – one of several recent legal setbacks for the former president, who is also charged with possible charges for meddling in Georgia’s elections and for bringing top-secret documents to Mar-a-Lago.
As such, it may reflect the cumulative effect of Trump’s mounting legal woes. Previous Yahoo News/YouGov polls have asked whether Trump will be allowed to serve again in a variety of scenarios, such as “if he was found guilty of mishandling highly classified documents” or “if he was found guilty of obstructing the [Justice Department’s] research.”
But this was the first to ask voters to consider whether several pending state and federal investigations, taken together, had already revealed enough wrongdoing to disqualify Trump from running for another term as president (regardless of whether he was ever found guilty).
Most voters say yes.
That’s not the strongest position to launch a reelection bid — something Trump is preparing by most accounts later this year or early next year.
Still, the new Yahoo News/YouGov poll wasn’t just bad news for the former president. Three weeks ago, President Biden held a 6-point lead over Trump (48% to 42%) in a hypothetical 2024 outright rematch — the Democrat’s biggest advantage in months. In the latest survey, Biden’s margin narrowed to 2 percentage points (47% to 45%).
But while Trump remains as competitive as ever in a general election context — where partisanship is paramount — the new poll also suggests that his position among Republican voters may be weakening somewhat.
In the immediate aftermath of the FBI’s August 8 raid on Mar-a-Lago, the GOP appeared to rally around Trump; preference for the former president (54%) over “someone else” (33%) in a 2024 theoretical primary matchup rose overnight among registered voters who identify as Republicans or Republican independents (from 48% up to 39% earlier).
But Trump’s “Mar-a-Lago hump” is now gone. In the new Yahoo News/YouGov survey, primary support for him among Republicans and Republican leaners fell 7 points in 2024 (to 47%), while support for someone else rose 3 points (to 36%). Another 17% say they are not sure.
In other words, less than half of Republican voters favor the former president for the party’s 2024 nomination. When he goes up against Florida governor Ron DeSantis, his most likely rival for the wink, he does. Trump doesn’t fare much better, at 47% against DeSantis’ 34%.
As for the New York state civil lawsuit, it’s unlikely to change Trump’s perception on its own. Only 27% of Americans say they’ve heard “a lot” about it, while another 34% say they’ve heard about it “sometimes”. The rest say ‘a little’ (20%) or ‘none’ (19%).
Perhaps as a result, fewer Americans think Trump “inflated the value of his assets by billions of dollars” (44%) than three weeks ago said he “took top-secret documents to Mar-a-Lago” (49%). The partisan divide also explains a lot: 83% of Biden voters in 2020 and 72% of Democrats believe Trump inflated his corporate assets by billions of dollars; only 10% of Trump voters in 2020 and 12% of Republicans agree.
Similarly, Americans are divided — largely along partisan lines — as to whether the New York lawsuit was motivated by a “genuine desire to hold Trump and his family accountable” (41%) or “a political bias against Trump and his family.” (39%).
That said, more than 6 in 10 (62%) say that if Trump “committed corporate fraud,” he “should be prosecuted” — a number that includes multiple Republicans (39%). However, only 44% of Americans say they should being charged with a felony “given what we know about the ongoing investigations.” Another 25% say they aren’t sure, while 31% say they shouldn’t be charged.
But there is room for James and the prosecutors to make their case. In early April, 45% of Americans told Yahoo News and YouGov that they believed Trump had “committed a serious crime” at some point in his life. Today that number is 50%. The proportion of Americans who believe they have never committed a serious crime has fallen from 30% to 27%.
Whether Trump will ever be convicted is another story. Given what we know today, only 27% of Americans believe the former president will eventually be “found guilty of a felony.” More – 36% – not.
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The Yahoo News survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 1,566 U.S. adults who were interviewed online from September 23 to September 27, 2022. This sample was weighted for gender, age, race, and education based on the American Community Survey, conducted by the U.S. Bureau of the Census, as well as presidential voting (or non-voting) and voter registration status in 2020. Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of all U.S. adults . The margin of error is about 2.7%.
