Two-Thirds of Independent Voters Do Not Want Donald Trump to Run for President in 2024: Poll
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Michelle Gustafson/Bloomberg via Getty Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally
As the former president finds himself the subject of numerous investigations and legal proceedings, a new poll suggests independent voters don't want Donald Trump to run again in 2024.
The poll — from NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist — shows that 67% percent of independent voters don't want Trump to run again, while 28% said they do.
The figures are not good news for 76-year-old Trump, who lost independents (along with the election) in 2020.
The numbers appear to be getting worse for the former president. Around 60% of people surveyed in an August 2021 poll from Quinnipiac University thought it would be "bad for the country" if Trump ran for president again in 2024. Slightly more than 60% of Independent voters polled at the time also thought Trump should not run again.
Since leaving office in January 2021, Trump remains a highly influential figure in Republican politics — continuing to make endorsements and hold rallies in which he openly flirts with running again.
But the twice-impeached former president's post-White House life has also been mired in intensifying investigations on various fronts, including into his political conduct and business affairs.
The ongoing investigations including the FBI's recent seizure of classified documents found during a search at Trump's Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Fla. August 8. The search was part of an ongoing criminal investigation into whether the former president violated statutes related to national security by allegedly mishandling classified documents he removed from the White House at the end of his presidency.
The search came against the backdrop of another investigation, into Trump's role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The House committee investigating the attack has shared its conclusions — based on countless hours of testimony from a legion of former Trump officials and other evidence — about multiple aspects of efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential during a series of televised public hearings throughout the summer.
In a court filing in March, a federal judge wrote that Trump and his attorney John Eastman enacted a plan to overturn the election, which Joe Biden won, and justified that plan with allegations of election fraud.
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Trump's post-election conduct is also being investigated in Georgia, where Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has launched a criminal investigation into whether into failed efforts to overturn the results that gave now-President Biden her state's 16 electoral votes.
After losing the popular vote in Georgia by 11,779 votes during the 2020 presidential race, Trump and his associates had multiple interactions with election officials in the once-reliably red state, including a phone call the former president placed on Jan. 2, 2021, to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to demand he "find 11,780 votes" to change the outcome.
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Trump says he's made up his mind about running for president again in 2024, saying in a July in interview with New York magazine: "Well, in my own mind, I've already made that decision, so nothing factors in anymore."
Speaking to political reporter Olivia Nuzzi, Trump suggested it was a question of when he would announce his candidacy, not if.
"I would say my big decision will be whether I go before or after," he told Nuzzi. "You understand what that means?"
Asked if he was referring to the upcoming midterm elections in November, Trump replies affirmatively. "Midterms," he says. "Do I go before or after? That will be my big decision."
