Most Americans want Trump to be completely removed from politics, research reveals

A 54% majority of US voters want former President Donald Trump to “deviate entirely from politics”.

Rebuking any hypothetical talk about Trump running for president again in 2024, most Americans would prefer to see him disappear completely from the public eye.

CNBC’s latest North American Economic Survey, released on Friday night, found large party divisions in that sentiment – 81% of Democrats wanting Trump to disappear entirely, compared with just 26% of Republican voters who think so. Smaller minorities of frustrated Republican voters want to see Trump start a third party or remain active in politics, but not with any direct loyalty to either party.

Meanwhile, according to the survey, about half of Republicans and Americans without a college degree said they want Trump to remain the head of the party in the near future. And 89% of American adults without a college degree said they want the former president to remain at the forefront of politics.

The Senate took no steps to legally prevent Trump from running again on Saturday. Instead, senators voted to absolve him of his impeachment charge by 57 votes to 43. In comments after Trump’s acquittal, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said, “I hope and pray and believe” that the American people will vehemently reject a potential campaign for 2024.

Among Republicans, three-quarters said they want Trump to remain active in local and national political disputes in some way – a sentiment echoed fervently by House Republican minority leader Kevin McCarthy. The House’s top Republican flew to Florida last week and asked Trump to help the party’s candidates in their 2022 campaigns.

Perhaps Trump’s most powerful and ubiquitous platform for communicating, Twitter, was silent while the social media giant banned his personal account and archived his previous @POTUS account.

This newest CNBC poll of 1,000 Americans from across the country took place February 2-7, just before the start of Trump’s second impeachment trial. He was accused of inciting a Capitol insurrection on January 6. If the Senate had successfully voted to convict Trump on Saturday with 67 votes, a second vote would have been necessary to prevent him from holding public office again.

A recently released separate CNBC poll, the first of Biden’s presidency, revealed that his government is entering the White House with relatively high approval numbers. By comparing the first polls from each previous government, the poll showed that the Americans gave Biden the highest approval rating among the last four presidents.

“If we are talking about Donald Trump’s future at the moment, the research shows that he still has strong central support within his own party, which really wants him to remain its leader,” said Jay Campbell, partner at Hart Research and the Democratic researcher for the CNBC vote.

His Republican Party research colleague, Micah Roberts, noted that Trump previously had a 90% approval rating among Republicans, meaning that some of his support has waned in recent weeks.

Newsweek contacted the White House, as well as the Republican Party’s national offices for additional comments on Saturday afternoon.