AP-NORC poll finds most Americans see Trump prioritizing business interests
A new AP-NORC poll found that 56% of U.S. adults say President Donald Trump has prioritized his personal business interests a lot, while 23% say he has prioritized the country a lot.
Most Americans say President Donald Trump has placed greater emphasis on his personal business interests than on the country as a whole, according to an AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released Tuesday, October 13, 2026.
The nationwide survey found that 56% of U.S. adults believe Trump has prioritized his personal business interests “a lot” since returning to office in 2025. A similar 54% said he has prioritized the business interests of friends and family a lot. By comparison, 23% said he has prioritized the country as a whole a lot, and 11% said the same about people like them.
The findings measure public perceptions, not legal conclusions about Trump's conduct. AP-NORC reported that 41% of adults believe Trump has personally profited from the presidency in a way that was illegal, while 18% described his conduct as unethical but not illegal. Another 18% said he had done nothing wrong, and 21% said they did not know enough to judge.
Those responses should not be read as proof that a crime occurred. No court finding is established by a public-opinion survey, and respondents were asked for their assessment of allegations about presidential profit. The poll instead shows how broadly concerns about conflicts of interest have registered with voters ahead of the November midterm elections.
Partisanship sharply shaped the answers. AP-NORC said about eight in 10 Democrats thought Trump had done something illegal, compared with roughly three in 10 independents and one in 10 Republicans. About half of Republicans nevertheless said Trump had prioritized his own business interests and those of friends and family either a lot or some.
The survey also found that half of Americans said Trump had not prioritized people like them at all. Republicans were much more likely than Democrats or independents to say he had focused on the country overall or on people like them, illustrating that the same presidency is being evaluated through very different partisan lenses.
The Associated Press framed the results against Trump's repeated public assertions that he is working for Americans while his family and business network remain prominent. The survey itself does not assign motives or calculate any financial benefit. It records what adults believe about the balance between Trump's public responsibilities and private interests.
AP-NORC noted that a 2023 survey asked a similar question about then-President Joe Biden's handling of the overseas business dealings of his son Hunter Biden and also found strong partisan divisions. That comparison provides context for the polarization in the new results, but it does not make the underlying allegations in the two cases equivalent.
The poll was conducted from September 24 through September 28 using NORC's probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel. It included online and telephone interviews with 2,140 adults nationwide and has an overall margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.
Released three weeks before the midterm elections, the results offer a current measure of public trust rather than a forecast of how people will vote. They indicate that concerns about Trump's business interests extend beyond his Democratic opponents, while also showing that judgments about legality remain deeply divided by party.
Sources and image credit
Independent reporting on the poll and its political context: Associated Press
Primary poll findings, toplines and methodology: AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research
Image: Official portrait by White House photographer Daniel Torok via Wikimedia Commons (public domain; photographed January 7, 2026; cropped to 16:9).