A new poll shows that the majority of Americans do not believe Donald Trump should be allowed to serve as president again given “what we know about the ongoing investigations” into him.
The Yahoo News/YouGov poll of 1,566 registered voters found that 51 per cent are against the former president running again in 2024.
Another 14 per cent are unsure and just over one-third (35 per cent) say he should be allowed to serve again.
The survey was conducted between 23-27 September, immediately after New York state Attorney General Letitia James filed her bombshell lawsuit against Mr Trump and three of his adult children for committing fraud by over-valuing assets to “obtain beneficial financial terms”.
The lawsuit filed by Ms James is just one of a myriad of legal problems facing the former president since he left office in January 2021.
Mr Trump also faces potential charges from a number of other sources, including: possible election interference in Georgia; ramifications from the 6 January House select committee investigation; fallout from the discovery of 200,000 pages of federal documents at his Palm Beach home (including classified information); and the defamation case against him brought by E Jean Carroll connected with her allegation that he raped her in the fitting room of a New York department store in the mid-1990s.
While just one of these might irreparably damage someone else’s political reputation, Mr Trump has to date avoided such consequences.
The significance of the Yahoo News/YouGov survey is that the cumulative effect of all of these various investigations may be coalescing to damage any political future for the former president.
Previous polling by the group has focused on the individual cases against Mr Trump, but this was the first to ask about them taken together. All of the polls were framed in the context of what was known to date and not whether he was found guilty or not.
The former president also faces bad news from within his party. According to the poll, the bump in support he received from fellow Republicans after the search of Mar-a-Lago by the FBI has dissipated with fewer than half in favour of his candidacy.
In the new survey, 2024 primary support for him among Republicans and Republican leaners has fallen by seven points (to 47 per cent) while support for someone else has risen by three points (to 36 per cent). Another 17 per cent say they’re not sure who they will support.
