Twenty-nine percent of voters think the allegations against President Donald Trump are not credible. | Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images Half of voters say sexual misconduct accusations against Trump are credible

Half of voters find sexual misconduct accusations against President Donald Trump to be credible, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll conducted against the backdrop of a national discussion on sexual harassment.

Fifty percent of registered voters think the allegations against Trump are credible, more than the 29 percent who think they are not credible. The remaining 21 percent of voters don’t know if the allegations are credible.


Trump, during last year’s presidential campaign, was accused of sexual abuse or harassment by more than a dozen women — some of whom have resurfaced in recent days in hopes that a renewed focus on sexual harassment would lead their claims to gain more traction. Six Democratic senators have seized on those allegations this week, calling on Trump to resign.

The new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll surveyed 1,955 registered voters from December 8-11, with most of the interviews completed before three of those women held a press conference on Monday to tell their stories.

Trump has denied their claims, both through the White House press office and on his widely read Twitter account, tweeting that they are “false accusations and fabricated stories of women who I don’t know and/or have never met. FAKE NEWS!”

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Democratic voters believe the allegations are mostly credible, however, by a 62 percent to 25 percent split. Independents find the claims of misconduct credible by a 2-to-1 margin, 50 percent to 24 percent.

Republican voters are split evenly: 38 percent find the charges credible, but the same percentage thinks they are not credible. Similarly, self-identified Trump voters in 2016 are also divided: 39 percent think the charges are credible, and 37 percent think they are not credible.



The POLITICO/Morning Consult poll has asked this question for the past four weeks, and the results have been mostly stable. The percentage of voters who find the allegations credible has hovered between 46 percent and 53 percent, while the percentage who think they are not credible has stayed between 26 percent and 32 percent.

Trump’s overall approval rating in the poll ticked down slightly, from 45 percent last week, to 43 percent this week — within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

A 52 percent majority of voters disapprove of the job Trump is doing as president, the poll shows, up a single point from last week’s survey.

Trump touted last week’s poll result on Twitter, despite the fact it showed Trump with majority disapproval. “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” the tweet read, accompanied by a graphic with the text: “President Donald J. Trump, 45% approval rating, Morning Consult/Politico poll.”

Morning Consult is a nonpartisan media and technology company that provides data-driven research and insights on politics, policy and business strategy

More details on the poll and its methodology can be found in these two documents — Toplines: http://politi.co/2BeR7NH | Crosstabs: http://politi.co/2jSJSkx