Sixty-nine percent of those polled said the Manhattan billionaire should not be forced to sell his businesses and those of his family. | Kathy Willens/AP Photo Poll: 69 percent says Trump shouldn't be forced to sell business

President-elect Donald Trump has promised to hand control of his business empire over to his children before he is sworn in as president next month, a pledge that some experts have decried as insufficient if he wants to avoid potential conflicts of interest.

But a new Bloomberg Politics poll released Wednesday shows a majority of Americans would be fine with Trump’s stated plan for his businesses. Sixty-nine percent of those polled said the Manhattan billionaire should not be forced to sell his businesses and those of his family. But 67 percent said that he needs to make a decision between being president and being a businessman.


A spokesman for Trump said Tuesday that the president-elect sold all of his stock last June, but the business mogul’s portfolio of assets goes far beyond that, with companies and real estate holdings around the world. Presidential candidates have historically pledged to place their assets into a blind trust once they arrive in office, a practice that in theory keeps them from making decisions in the White House based on their own financial interests instead of the nation’s. Trump’s pledge to give control of his companies to his children would fall short of meeting the blind-trust threshold.

Fifty-one percent of respondents said they are either very or mostly confident that Trump will put the nation’s interests ahead of his family financial interests in his international dealings with foreign leaders.

Trump’s favorability rating, which sat at 33 percent in a Bloomberg Politics poll conducted in August, climbed to 50 percent in the poll released Wednesday. President Barack Obama was viewed favorably by 78 percent of respondents in a Bloomberg poll taken in January, 2009, months after he won his first presidential election.

Vice President Joe Biden, who said earlier this week that he is considering a presidential run in 2020, is viewed favorably 56 percent of respondents, the same rating as President Obama.

The American public also appears ready to cut Trump some slack on his campaign promises, with 73 percent of respondents saying they’re accepting of his recalibration of some pledges. Trump has already backed away from his promise to seek a special prosecutor to investigate his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton for any potential wrongdoing, and has softened somewhat on several other campaign pledges as he attempts to strike a more unifying tone.

The Bloomberg Politics poll surveyed 999 American adults aged 18 or older from Dec. 2 to Dec. 5. It’s margin of error is plus-or-minus 3 percentage points.