A large majority of voters do not want to see President Donald Trump back on the ballot in 2028 to run for a third term.
On Monday, CNN’s Harry Enten showed a new poll that addressed whether Trump should run for a third term, an idea, Enten wrote in a post on X, that is “as popular as New Coke. Americans [say] “no, no, no.”
The poll showed that 76% of Americans do not want the president to run for a third term, while 21% support it, including 16% of independents.
“This is one of the least popular ideas I have ever seen,” Enten said. “And when you get three-quarters of the American people agreeing on anything, and it’s in the ‘no,’ it’s a ‘nein, nein, nein.’”
Among Republicans, Enten said 53% are against the president running again, while 44% are against it.
“The bottom line is it would be difficult at this point to see Donald Trump sailing away in a Republican primary if, in fact, he decided to run,” Enten said. “He would face some real competition here, given that 53%, the majority of Republicans, are even against the idea of Donald Trump running for a third term.”
The poll numbers are a decline from the 66% of Republicans who wanted him to run for a second term as of May 2021, Enten said.
Since his second term started, Trump has brought up the idea of running for a third term, at times, referring to it as a joke. During an interview with NBC News’s Kristin Welker on “Meet the Press,” Trump backtracked from those past remarks.
“I’ll be an eight-year president; I’ll be a two-term president,” Trump said Sunday. “I always thought that was very important … It’s something that, to the best of my knowledge, you’re not allowed to do. I don’t know if that’s constitutional that they’re not allowing you to do it or anything else.”
Trump added that he was focused on his current term and will turn the presidency “over to somebody, ideally a great Republican, a great Republican to carry it forward.”
The 22nd Amendment of the Constitution prohibits anyone who has served two terms as president from running for a third term. To overturn this, Trump would need support from two-thirds of the House of Representatives and the Senate or a constitutional convention called for by two-thirds of the state legislatures. After which, three-quarters of state legislatures must approve the amendment.
The 22nd Amendment was ratified in 1951. The nation’s first president, George Washington, set the standard carried on by several of his successors to serve two terms. Ulysses S. Grant failed to win the Republican nomination for a nonconsecutive third term in 1880. Theodore Roosevelt ran for a third term during the election of 1912, which divided Republican voters and allowed Democrat Woodrow Wilson to win that year.
It was Roosevelt’s cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who broke the standard and successfully won a third term in 1940. He would go on to win a fourth time in 1944, but he died months later in April 1945.
Shortly after Trump returned to the White House, Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., proposed a House resolution amending the Constitution to allow presidents to serve three terms. Since January, his proposal has not moved forward.
