--- title: Most Americans Think Donald Trump Committed Crimes: Poll description: Nearly two-thirds of American voters in a new poll think Donald Trump committed crimes before he became president, according to a new poll. canonical: https://time.com/5545427/donald-trump-crimes-poll/ author: TIME article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2019-03-05T22:01:52.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-23T22:56:54.291Z article:section: Politics og:title: Nearly Two-Thirds of Voters Think Trump Committed Crimes Before Becoming President: Poll og:description: While 45% think he's done so in office og:url: https://time.com/5545427/donald-trump-crimes-poll/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt73c2dbc8933b1550/69894648096a9467146a4b2c/trump-crimes-poll.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: President Trump Addresses Conservative Political Action Conference og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Nearly Two-Thirds of Voters Think Trump Committed Crimes Before Becoming President: Poll twitter:description: While 45% think he's done so in office twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt73c2dbc8933b1550/69894648096a9467146a4b2c/trump-crimes-poll.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Nearly Two-Thirds of Voters Think Trump Committed Crimes Before Becoming President: Poll by [Ryan Teague Beckwith](https://time.com/author/ryan-teague-beckwith/) ## Ryan Teague Beckwith Mar 5, 2019 10:01 PM UTC  U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during CPAC 2019 on March 02, 2019 in National Harbor, Maryland. The American Conservative Union hosts the annual Conservative Political Action Conference to discuss conservative agenda. U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during CPAC 2019 on March 02, 2019 in National Harbor, Maryland. The American Conservative Union hosts the annual Conservative Political Action Conference to discuss conservative agenda.Tasos Katopodis—Getty Images by [Ryan Teague Beckwith](https://time.com/author/ryan-teague-beckwith/) ## Ryan Teague Beckwith Mar 5, 2019 10:01 PM UTC Nearly two-thirds of American voters in a new poll think Donald Trump committed crimes before he became President, and 45% say he’s committed crimes as President. [According to the Quinnipiac University Poll](https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2603), voters split 64-24% on whether Trump committed crimes before being elected, while they were more evenly split on crimes committed in office, 45-43%. “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,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac poll. Democratic voters were most likely to believe Trump had committed a crime, at 89%; Independents agreed, by 65%; while Republicans were more skeptical, with only 33% thinking he’d committed a crime. The live-interviewer poll of 1,120 voters nationwide was conducted March 1-4, after Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, accused him of being “a racist,” “a conman” and “a cheat” in [hours of live testimony](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/27/us/politics/cohen-documents-testimony.html) before the House Oversight Committee. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5545427/donald-trump-crimes-poll/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5545427/donald-trump-crimes-poll/"},"headline":"Nearly Two-Thirds of Voters Think Trump Committed Crimes Before Becoming President: Poll","datePublished":"2019-03-05T22:01:52.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-23T22:56:54.291Z","description":"Nearly two-thirds of American voters in a new poll think Donald Trump committed crimes before he became president, according to a new poll.","url":"https://time.com/5545427/donald-trump-crimes-poll/","keywords":["Polling","Donald Trump","onetime"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt73c2dbc8933b1550/69894648096a9467146a4b2c/trump-crimes-poll.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Ryan Teague Beckwith","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/ryan-teague-beckwith/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt73c2dbc8933b1550/69894648096a9467146a4b2c/trump-crimes-poll.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"President Trump Addresses Conservative Political Action Conference","caption":"President Trump Addresses Conservative Political Action Conference","creditText":"Tasos Katopodis—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/polling/","name":"Polling"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/5545427/donald-trump-crimes-poll/","name":"Nearly Two-Thirds of Voters Think Trump Committed Crimes Before Becoming President: Poll"}}]}] ```