Majority don’t think Trump should be allowed to hold future office: poll

A majority of Americans believe former President Trump should be barred from holding future office, according to polling released Monday days after the Senate acquitted the ex-president in his second impeachment trial.

Fifty-five percent of Americans said Trump should be disqualified from running again, including in 2024, compared to 43 percent who said he should not, according to a Quinnipiac University poll.

The survey found that 87 percent of Republicans said Trump should be allowed to seek future office, while a slightly smaller majority of Republicans, 75 percent, said they want him to play a role in the party’s future. In contrast, 96 percent of Democrats and 61 percent of independents said he should not play a prominent role.

Pollsters found that 68 percent of Americans said the then-president did not do all he could to prevent the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Fifty percent said he deliberately spread misinformation about election fraud, while 42 percent said he sincerely believed his false claims.

House impeachment managers argued last week that Trump deliberately inflamed the crowd immediately before the riot and in the months leading up to it, while his defense team claimed he had used figurative, politically-protected language and that the riot was pre-planned.

The process marked the first time in history a president has been impeached twice. It was also the most bipartisan vote in history in both the impeachment vote in which 10 House Republicans voted in favor and in the impeachment trial in which seven GOP senators voted to convict. 

The final Senate vote, 57-43, was shy of the two-thirds majority needed to convict Trump, which also would have prevented him from running for office again.

A YouGov/Economist poll released Saturday, the day of the vote, had similar results, with 53 percent saying Trump should not be allowed to hold office again.

Pollsters surveyed 1,056 adults from Feb. 11-14. The survey has a 3 point margin of error.