What do Americans think about Trump’s hush money trial?

This week, former President Donald Trump became the first U.S. president to stand trial on criminal charges. Yahoo News National Correspondent Andrew Romano reveals new insights from a Yahoo News/YouGov poll on what voters think about the charges of ​​falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments to a porn star and how this trial — and the other three criminal cases against Trump — could affect the 2024 presidential election.

Video Transcript

ANDREW ROMANO: So, this week, we've gotten the results back from a new Yahoo News YouGov poll, and it shows that more Americans than ever before consider the underlying crime that Donald Trump has been charged with, that is falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments to a porn star, to be a serious crime. And only 34% of Americans think he should be allowed to serve again if convicted. But Trump has other legal issues looming and Americans consider those to be even more serious crimes.

Taking highly classified documents from the White House and obstructing efforts to retrieve them, conspiring to overturn the results of a presidential election, and attempting to obstruct the certification of a presidential election. And given that Trump is running for president again, these trials could have major political implications. First of all, we've seen Trump's narrow lead over Joe Biden, which was present in our previous polls, evaporate. And a full 65% of Americans think it's important that voters get a verdict in all four of Trump's trials before the 2024 election.

Given the various delays in Trump's trials, it's not realistic to think that we are going to get a final verdict in all four of them before the election, but there are a number of Americans in our poll who say that they would be reluctant to vote for Donald Trump if he's a convicted felon. He could be a convicted felon soon, if he's convicted in this first criminal trial, the hush money trial in Manhattan.

Do they stick to that? Do they actually back away from Donald Trump? Do they vote for Joe Biden instead? Do they go to a third party? We've just never seen this before in American politics. And it could be a reality that sort of staring us in the face very soon.