Voters and the Verdict

Trump was found guilty. But do the voters care? The most important ones just might.

Image of Trump, courtesy of PBS

With the guilty verdict and 34 felony counts for Trump now in the history books, the next logical question is what will this mean for the election? 

Three major polls and one “snap poll” have come out since the verdict that specifically tease out whether the verdict has impacted voter views. Yes, I know, polls schmolls. As with presidential preference polling, these could be off by several percentage points either way. 

But some of these polls are interesting to me because they focus on Trump and his criminal convictions. This is quite different than a strict comparison of the two candidates, where respondents must weigh the “vibes” of Joe Biden’s economy against nostalgia, however misplaced, for the pre-pandemic past and lower prices under Trump. Further, these polls did not seek primarily to complete a picture of how the electorate will actually vote as a whole, but rather how attitudes may have shifted within Republicans, Democrats and independents around Trump post-conviction.

Notably, the Reuters/Ipsos poll also proceeded the same way, before and after the trial, with the same methodologies. And the ABC News/Ipsos poll went long, with the same questions having been asked around a year ago about Trump just after the indictment first dropped. So give or take a few percentage points, these should at least be internally consistent and most importantly show any big shifts, even if the absolute number could be way off. 

So with all my usual caveats around the inaccuracies and biases of polling, let’s take a look at these early indicators, which also happen to have come in fairly close to each other. 

The Reuters/Ipsos poll

According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll taken in the two days following the verdict, there are only a few surprises. In the no-surprise zone from among GOP voters, the die-hard Trumpers are more Trumpy than ever, most Republicans remain unmoved by the verdict, but a small but significant percentage reported being less likely to support Trump after the verdict.

By the numbers, 35 percent of Republicans answered they would be more likely to vote for Trump, 56 percent said it would not affect their vote, but 10 percent said they would be less likely.

It’s that 10 percent that Trump should be worried about. As Reuters explained, “The potential loss of a tenth of his party’s voters is more significant for Trump than the stronger backing of more than a third of Republicans, since many of the latter would be likely to vote for him regardless of the conviction.”

The 10 percenters likely include many of the “Haley” Republicans who are already unhappy about Trump as the nominee. And remember, among the 56 percent of Republicans who said it wouldn’t affect their decision, some have already decided they aren’t likely to vote for him. The verdict didn’t change that decision.

The numbers look a bit worse for Trump among independents, which is where the race will largely be decided. Reuters noted,

Among independent registered voters, 25% said Trump’s conviction made them less likely to support him in November, compared to 18% who said they were more likely and 56% who said the conviction would have no impact on their decision.

It’s helpful to note that independents are rarely true “swing” voters. Most independents are Republican- or Democratic-leaning, and they historically vote fairly reliably with those parties. But no matter how you look at it, a negative shift among a quarter of these voters is bad news for the Trump Campaign.

In good news for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, most of the 2,500 Americans surveyed in the Reuters/Ipsos poll—around 54 percent—agreed the prosecution was about upholding the law and was not politically motivated.

What’s perhaps most interesting is what the survey reveals about the voter sentiment, comparing attitudes from before to after the trial. As Ipsos explained, ahead of the trial 60 percent of registered voters surveyed said they would not vote for Trump if convicted of a crime. But that dropped to 54 percent by the time the guilty verdict was announced. 

Before we feel our stomachs drop, it’s important to note that this shift was nearly all driven by Republicans. Back in April, 24 percent of Republicans said they would not vote for Trump if he were to be convicted of a felony crime by a jury. However, following Friday’s guilty verdict, only 14 percent say they would now not vote for him. The number of “Don’t know/Refused” also dropped among Republicans by around 6 percent. 

Notably, the number of Democrats and independents saying they would not vote for Trump remained about the same post- and pre-trial, at 90-91 percent and 58-60 percent respectively.

Bottom line? The right-wing propaganda machine has been successful at getting many Republicans to see the verdict as illegitimate, but the larger electorate’s views did not significantly shift. The Trump Campaign will have to do better among independents and get them to vote for him despite the verdict. 

That’s doable, but it’s not an enviable task.

The Morning Consult Poll

A second poll from Morning Consult contains some tough news for Trump as well. 

Like the Reuters/Ipsos poll, over half of the voters surveyed by Morning Consult approved of the verdict—around 54 percent. This is far higher than the 34 percent who disapproved. A similar share believed Trump committed a crime. These numbers are consistent with data showing around one-third of the country are die-hard Trumpers.

That still leaves around 12 percent undecided and persuadable on the question of the verdict. These are generally lower information voters who haven’t yet tuned in to the election, if they will at all.

Of greater concern to the Trump Campaign again may be the views of  independents and GOP defectors. In the Morning Consult poll, 49 percent of independents believed Trump should drop out of the race, while 15 percent of general Republican voters thought he should as well. That latter number is consistent with the expected number of “Haley” voters out there. 

Notably, around 8 percent of Trump’s current supporters felt he should drop out now. But that may just be noise in the wake of the verdict. As long-time Trump supporters, most of those folks are likely to change their minds over time and return to supporting their leader.

On the question of punishment, around half of those surveyed said they oppose Trump’s incarceration. A sizable 69 percent were in favor of only fining him. As between jail and probation, more favored probation (49 percent) than jail (44 percent).

The ABC News/Ipsos poll

Another major news network-backed poll, from ABC News and Ipsos, also showed that most Americans felt the verdict was correct, in this case by a 2-to-1 ratio. As Ipsos reported,

By a 50% (correct) to 27% (not correct) margin, Americans support the guilty verdict in the case of “falsifying business records regarding a payment made to Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election”

Some 23 percent weren’t certain.

That uncertainty may come from lack of attention. The survey found that only around half (55 percent) of respondents were following the trial closely. Within the group paying attention, the numbers were still worse for Trump, with 57 percent saying the verdict was correct, 35 percent saying it was incorrect, and only 8 percent answering “don’t know.”

On the question of whether Trump should end his campaign, 49 percent said he should, 37 percent said he should not, and 14 percent said they “don’t know.”

Breaking this further down by party, within the GOP around 16 percent said he should end his campaign (hello, Haley voters!), while 52 percent of independents and 79 percent of Democrats said he should end it. Those numbers among independents are quite close to what the Morning Consult poll found.

The most salient fact about the ABC News poll is that these numbers have not changed much from a poll taken at the time of the indictment a year ago. That means that, at least within this poll and using consistent methodology, the verdict has not changed public opinion very much about Trump. His criminality appears baked into the numbers.

So what gives?

It is difficult to square these bad numbers for Trump with the larger polling narrative that says the race is essentially tied or even that Trump is leading, if you believe the New York Times. (I do not.) After all, if half of independents say he should drop out, and the Haley Republicans say he should drop out, why isn’t Biden cruising to a victory in the polls?

This has a lot to do with where we are in the election, especially how presidential preference polls taken this far out essentially measure voter dissatisfaction with the incumbent and aren’t predictive. Just as it is rather depressing to think that most Americans were not closely following the trial of an ex-president, which was the first of its kind in our nation’s history, it is also rather hard for those worried about the future of our Republic to accept that most Americans have not yet thought very hard about it.

And in their defense, why should they? It’s the same two guys who ran against each other before. Those dissatisfied by both candidates are called the “double-haters,” and they could wind up swinging the election one way or the other in November, just as they did in 2016 by breaking for Trump and in 2020 by breaking for Biden.

In bad news for Trump, there are some tea leaves to be read here, too. As ABC News reports,

A majority of Independents think Trump’s verdict was correct, 52%, and the same amount believe that he should end his candidacy. For double-haters, those reactions are even more pronounced—65% of Americans who view both Trump and Biden unfavorably think the verdict this week was correct, with 67% believing Trump should end his presidential campaign.

The next six weeks will focus on Trump’s upcoming sentencing, and that could also take a toll on his image. But we shouldn’t expect the larger polls to change very much until after the nominating conventions, when voters start to really pay attention. In the remaining months, it will be imperative to get the voters to associate Trump with his own criminal record and hammer home the point that a felon has no business running for office, let alone sitting in the Oval Office.