Almost half of all voters want Donald Trump to suspend his presidential campaign, an ABC News/Ipsos poll found. According to the survey, 48% of voters polled said the former president should put a hold on his bid to regain the office he lost to Joe Biden in 2020.
Trump enjoyed a slight bump in a Rasmussen Reports poll taken on April 7 and led President Biden by a 51% to 46% margin. That Trump advantage has all but evaporated, with Trump having 50% to 49% for Biden.
“In a second poll fielded a week after news broke about former President Donald Trump’s indictment on charges related to falsifying business records in hush money payments, the divisions among Americans regarding Trump continue to deepen,” Ipsos said in a press release announcing the results of polling that followed Trump’s arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court last week. “This comes as independents and people who were undecided on this issue last week look to be moving away from the former president by small margins. The poll also finds that a majority of Americans believe Trump intentionally acted illegally.”
Donald Trump is the first ex-president defeated for re-election to seek a second term since Grover Cleveland ran and won in 1892 in a rematch with Benjamin Harrison, who had defeated him in the 1888 election. Trump is the only former president to be indicted for a crime after leaving office. He is the first major candidate for president to run with a legal cloud over his head.
Trump’s arraignment and likely trial during the 2024 primary season likely will cost him dearly at the polls.
Fifty-two percent stated they thought the charges against Trump were serious. That was up two points from two weeks ago. Only 11% said Trump acted wrongly but not criminally. Twenty percent said they did not think Trump did anything wrong.
This is not the only recent poll to show the American electorate takes the charges against Trump seriously.
CNN released a poll following the indictment that stated 62% of voters approved of the indictment. Republicans were united in their opposition, with 79% disapproving and 54% strongly disapproving.
Sixty-two percent of women approved of the indictment, as did 58% of men. Among blacks, a demographic that Trump has worked hard to make inroads, 82% said they thought the indictment was warranted. Among Hispanics, 71% said Trump should have been indicted. And among whites, 51% approved.
Even those who disapproved told the CNN poll that they believed that Trump’s payment to Stormy Daniels was inappropriate, at 52%. And 48% said they thought the payment was unethical.
Perceptions of the former president’s legal woes were a problem for him even before the indictment.
A March 29 Quinnipiac Poll taken before Trump’s arraignment similarly found that a majority of voters — 55% — thought the charges against him were serious. Of those, 32% thought the charges were very serious, and 23% thought they were somewhat serious.
On the other hand, 42% thought the accusations were not serious, and 62% of respondents in the Quinnipiac Poll said they thought the indictment was political.
Trump’s base will vote for him under any and all circumstances, but these polls show that he faces serious headwinds going into 2024.
MORE: Video – Ukraine Has Massive New NATO ‘Cannon’ Ready To Fight Russia
MORE: ‘Americans Will Pay The Price’: One Democrat Is Angry At Joe Biden
