Majority says criminal charges against Trump should disqualify him in 2024 race, poll says

A majority of Americans believe that Donald Trump should be disqualified from running for president again if he is criminally charged in any of the multiple federal and state investigations he faces, a new Quinnipiac University poll found.

The survey found that 57% of respondents said Trump should be disqualified from seeking the White House if he is criminally charged, compared with 38% who said he should not be barred from doing so.

Even so, Trump saw relatively strong support in the Quinnipiac poll among Republicans and Republican-leaning voters.

A majority of that group said they would vote for him in a GOP primary, by a 10 percentage point margin over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the only other Republican who registered anything close to significant support. DeSantis has signaled he could seek the presidency but has not yet launched a campaign.

Republicans and Republican-leaning voters also by a wide margin, 75% to 23%, believed that Trump should not be disqualified from seeking the presidency if he is criminally charged.

Among Democrats, 88% said charges should disqualify him. Fifty-five percent of independent voters agreed such charges should prevent Trump from running.

The poll questioned 1,788 adults over the past week. It had a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points.

Trump in November announced his candidacy for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

He is under criminal investigation by a special counsel for the Department of Justice in two separate probes, and by local district attorneys in New York and Georgia.

In the Manhattan DA's case, Trump is being eyed in connection with a hush money payment his then-lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen gave to porn star Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 presidential election.

Trump is under investigation for how that payment to Daniels was classified in business records by the Trump Organization. It reported his reimbursement to Cohen for the payment as being for "legal expenses."

The Quinnipiac poll found that 55% of voters said those allegations were very serious or somewhat serious, while 42% said they were not serious, or not too serious.

A solid majority of voters, 62%, said they agreed with the idea that the Manhattan investigation is mainly motivated by politics.

Trump himself has claimed that DA Alvin Bragg, who is a Democrat, has a political agenda in pursuing the probe.

One of the DOJ probes is investigating Trump for his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden.

The other DOJ investigation is eyeing Trump's refusal to return government records, some of them highly classified, after he left office.

In Atlanta, the Fulton County DA is investigating Trump for potentially illegal interference in that state's 2020 election by pressuring Georgia election officials to undo Biden's victory there.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing.

Follow our live coverage of former President Donald Trump's surrender and arraignment at the Manhattan criminal courthouse.