Elections

Poll: Voters Largely Undecided If Trump Committed A Crime In The White House

REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Phillip Stucky Contributor
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Voters appeared unable to make up their minds on whether or not President Donald Trump committed “crimes” during his time in the White House, according to a Quinnipiac poll released Tuesday.

Forty-five percent of respondents in the poll stated they believed the president committed some type of illegal activity during his time in office, but a statistically similar 43 percent stated they believed Trump hadn’t committed any type of crime while in office.

The headline statistic of the poll revealed that 64 percent of general respondents believed that Trump has committed at least one loosely defined “crime” at some point in his life, compared to 24 percent who argued the president hasn’t committed a crime at all during his life.

“The answers to two survey questions deliver a double-barreled gut punch to the honesty question,” Quinnipiac Assistant Director Tim Malloy said about the poll results.

“When two-thirds of voters think you have committed a crime in your past life, and almost half of voters say it’s a tossup over whether you committed a crime while in the Oval Office, confidence in your overall integrity is very shaky,” Malloy added.  “Add to that, Michael Cohen, a known liar headed to the big house, has more credibility than the leader of the free world.”

Only 38 percent of respondents approved of the job Trump was doing as president. That’s slightly lower than a Wall Street Journal poll also released Tuesday that revealed 46 percent of respondents approved of the job Trump is doing.

CNN’s Harry Enten broke down those results and what they could mean for the president.

“If Donald Trump is going to win this election, it means he has to make it a choice between the democratic candidate and himself,” Enten, who recently joined CNN from statistics site 538, suggested.

“These poll numbers suggest he’s not doing that at this point and why is that important? It’s important because the president has consistently had an approval rating below his disapproval rating and in order to win, he has to make it a choice. He’s not doing that. This is not 2016 when the president was able to win his first election despite the fact that his favorable rating was he’s more popular now but this election is turning into a referendum on the president of the United States.”(RELATED: CNN Focus Group: Biden Needs To ‘Stay Away’)

Quinnipiac surveyed 1,120 registered voters in a telephone survey, and the margin of error on the topline statistics was 3.4 percentage points in either direction. Researchers contacted respondents from March 1, 2019, through March 4, 2019.