A new poll shows that more than 6 in 10 voters in the U.S. do not want to see Donald Trump run for president for the third election cycle in a row.
Trump has all but officially declared himself a candidate for the 2024 presidential election, alluding to a run at rallies and posting polling data on his Truth Social website that suggests he’s planning to run again. Many commentators have predicted that he will announce another presidential run sometime this fall.
But according to an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll that was conducted from August 29 to September 1, just 33 percent of registered voters in the U.S. believe Trump should run again, while 61 percent say he should not.
When asked whether Trump should run if he ends up being charged with a crime — a question alluding to his improper removal of classified documents from the White House after leaving office — 65 percent of registered voters said he shouldn’t run, while 27 percent said he should.
A majority of the poll’s respondents believe Trump’s actions were wrong, though some differ on whether or not removing the documents constituted a crime. Forty-five percent of registered voters said keeping classified documents at Mar-a-Lago was illegal, while 17 percent said it was unethical but not illegal. Just 30 percent said Trump did nothing wrong at all.
Notably, some of the poll’s respondents were asked the question before details and images of what Trump had stored at Mar-a-Lago were made public, as that information was reported on while the poll was still being conducted. An Economist/YouGov poll that was conducted shortly after that information was released shows that only half the country had seen the images while the NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll was collecting data.
Although polling shows that Trump would likely lose the general election should he run in 2024, the former president has been sharing misleading polling data on his Truth Social account indicating that he would win.
Trump recently posted a USA Today/Ipsos poll from late last month, but only included data showing that 6 in 10 GOP voters want him to be the Republican nominee for 2024. However, he omitted data from that same poll showing that 51 percent of Americans overall view him in an unfavorable light.
Trump also shared a survey from pollster Richard Baris, director of the Big Data Poll, who often shares his findings on the Twitter account @Peoples_Pundit. According to that poll, Trump is leading President Joe Biden in a hypothetical rematch by nearly five points.
The Big Data Poll is not considered reliable, and FiveThirtyEight has banned it from being shared on its site. Though it doesn’t go into details why, data from The Big Data Poll that FiveThirtyEight has collected indicates that the organization only correctly picks winners in one out of every four races it watches.
FiveThirtyEight explains why it bans certain polls in a general statement on a different part of its website:
We will permanently ban any pollster found to be falsifying data or exploiting betting markets based on knowledge of how their survey might affect these markets. Additionally, we reserve the right to ban polls sponsored by a particular organization that consistently engages in dishonest or nontransparent behavior that goes beyond editorializing and political spin.
Other polling that pits Trump head-to-head with Biden shows that Biden would likely fare better with voters. A recent Wall Street Journal poll, for example, shows Biden ahead of Trump by six points.
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