A new Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows that only 23% of Americans think Donald Trump should be allowed to run for president again if convicted of a “serious” crime.
Meanwhile, 62% of those polled say Trump should not be allowed to serve again under this scenario.
The survey of 1,520 American adults, which was conducted May 25-30, underscores the political peril the former president faces as his legal troubles pile up. In April, a Manhattan grand jury indicted Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal silent money payments made to a porn star during his 2016 presidential campaign; Trump’s criminal trial in the case is set to begin next March, right in the middle of the GOP primary schedule.
In the coming months, prosecutors in Georgia and Washington, D.C., could also indict Trump for taking highly classified documents from the White House or attempting to nullify the 2020 election.
Yet while the new Yahoo News/YouGov poll suggests that criminal convictions in these cases could make it very difficult for Trump to defeat President Biden in the November 2024 general election, the numbers also indicate that Trump could still easily win the Republican nomination even if he is guilty.
To gauge the potential political repercussions of Trump’s criminal cases, Yahoo News and YouGov didn’t just ask whether being convicted of a serious crime should bar Trump from serving again; Respondents were also asked which (if any) of the possible charges against the former president they would consider “serious crimes” in the first place.
The results are striking. Overall, the majority of Americans say each of the major charges Trump could face would qualify as “serious crimes.”
Where Trump is most vulnerable
Two-thirds (66%) say “conspiring to overturn the results of a presidential election” is a serious crime. Almost as many say the same about “inciting or aiding an insurrection against the federal government” (64%); “taking highly classified documents from the White House and hindering efforts to recover them” (63%); and “attempting to obstruct the certification of a presidential election” (63%).
A smaller majority (52%) say “falsifying business records to conceal silent money payments to a porn star” is a serious crime.
In each case, these numbers are a few percentage points higher among registered voters.
The problem for Trump is therefore clear. Most Americans (52%) and voters (55%) already think he has “committed a serious crime to [some] time of his life. Even more say the alleged election and document offenses he is currently being investigated for would be categorized as ‘serious crimes’ – and that he should not be allowed to return to the White House s he is found guilty of this type of violation of the law.
Conversely, only about 1 in 5 Americans say the opposite: that the potential charges against Trump are not serious crimes or that he should be allowed to serve again if convicted.
Most Republicans still want Trump as their nominee
It’s possible, of course, that Trump won’t be charged or convicted until the 2024 election (or ever). And it’s likely that even if it is, partisanship and polarization would immediately shatter any tentative consensus on criminal convictions and the presidency.
Still, it would be hard to win a general election while he is impeached or tried for crimes that more than 6 in 10 voters currently consider disqualifying.
Winning the Republican nomination, however, would likely be much easier, according to the poll. Right now, about half of potential GOP primary voters would rather see Trump as their candidate (52%) than “someone else” (36%). The former president’s lead over his most powerful rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, has grown to nearly 30 points in recent months – even though (or perhaps because) Trump’s legal danger has increased.
Meanwhile, Trump is even more dominant in hypothetical matchups against other declared, likely, or potential GOP candidates, leading South Carolina Gov. Tim Scott, 69% to 18%; former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, 70% to 18%; former Vice President Mike Pence, 73% to 16%; former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, 77% to 10%; and Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, 72% to 10%.
Could a “serious” criminal charge or conviction change this dynamic?
It’s long. A plurality of potential GOP primary voters (46%) already say Trump should be allowed to serve again even if he is convicted of something they consider a serious crime. Against a split field, that’s probably enough support to earn him the nomination. (Trump got about 45% of the primary vote in 2016.)
On the other hand, only 37% of potential GOP primary voters say Trump should not be allowed to serve again if convicted of a serious crime. That sounds like a substantial minority — but in reality, that includes just 19% of those who currently support Trump against the full GOP field and just 20% of those who support Trump in a hypothetical face-off with DeSantis.
In other words, Trump could still lead even if he lost all potential GOP voters in the primaries who now support him but also say serious crimes would be disqualifying.
Worse still for DeSantis & Co. is that Trump would almost certainly not lose all of those voters. For what? Because only 10-12% of them believe that potential charges against Trump — attempting to obstruct the certification of a presidential election, for example, or taking highly classified White House documents and obstructing efforts to recover – are in fact the kind of serious crimes that they would consider disqualifying.
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The Yahoo News survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 1,520 U.S. adults surveyed online May 25-30, 2023. The sample was weighted by gender, age , race, education, 2020 election turnout and presidential vote, reference party ID and current voter registration status. Demographic weighting targets are from the 2019 American Community Survey. The basic party ID is the respondent’s most recent answer given before March 15, 2022 and is weighted by the estimated distribution at that time (32% Democrat, 27% Republican). Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of all American adults. The margin of error is about 2.7%.