It’s hard to believe (at least to me), but it’s been almost a week since former President Donald Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts in a Manhattan criminal trial.
If you wait a while, more quality polls will be analyzed.
Now is a good time to take stock. So let’s take stock.
The Americans signed the ruling.
Americans didn’t believe Trump’s claim of victimhood before the verdict, and they still don’t believe it after it comes out. In fact, they’re more likely to believe Manhattan got it right.
An ABC News/Ipsos poll found Americans favor the ruling 50 percent to 27 percent. An Economist/YouGov poll found it 50 percent to 38 percent. A Quinnipiac University poll in Georgia found voters there by a 50-44 margin in favor of the ruling. And a New York Times/Siena poll, which re-contacted voters from previous polls, found them by a 46-33 margin in favor of the ruling.
Those who do aren’t majorities — most are around 50 percent — but they far outnumber those who see the sentence as unjust. (A YouGov poll this week found that only 39 percent said Trump has been treated more harshly by the justice system than others.)
This essentially suggests that only Trump’s strongest supporters believe that Trump is the victim and that theories about a backlash from Trump supporters are exaggerated.
Even more people think Trump is bad.
Interestingly, the number of people who support the ruling is actually Bargain Percentage of people who think Trump is to blame.
- A SurveyMonkey poll on Wednesday showed Americans favor the verdict 49-34, consistent with other polls, but more — 57 percent — said Trump’s actions were a crime.
- Similarly, a CBS News/YouGov poll, which had fewer undecided votes than the other polls, showed 57 percent agreed with the verdict.
- And finally, the Ipsos poll found that more than six in 10 people said that Trump either did something wrong on purpose (51%) or “became wrong unintentionally” (12%).
All of this suggests that the American public clearly thinks Trump was wrong, even if some voters think this is no big deal.
A subtle but clear shift toward Biden
The ruling didn’t change the 2024 election as dramatically as Democrats had hoped, but it does seem to have dealt a small blow to Trump given the totality of the evidence — and as I’ve said many times before, in a very close election, small differences can have big consequences.
The Times/Siena poll, which is probably the best indicator since it recontacted voters from the April and May polls, shows that support for President Biden rose by 2 percentage points. Three percent of Trump supporters switched to Biden, and 4% moved into the undecided camp. (Some voters moved away from Biden, but not by much.)
Perhaps most encouraging for Biden is that roughly a quarter of those who switched from Biden in 2020 to Trump in 2024 are voting for him again in 2024. And Biden especially won over younger, non-white and less-engaged voters — the very voters who are most problematic for him.
Other polls conducted around the time of the ruling have suggested anything from no change to a 2-point tilt toward Biden.
The changes are much smaller than pre-election polls predicted, and some of the changes may be due to other factors or may not hold over time, but in a race like this, every inch counts.
We’ll find out on July 11 what President Trump’s sentence will be, and whether he will actually go to prison.
On the one hand, polls suggest that a prison sentence would be more likely to alienate Trump voters than a simple guilty verdict, and on the other hand, Americans appear to be opposed to a prison sentence in this case, 51-46 percent in a Reuters/Ipsos poll and 45-38 percent in a CBS News/YouGov poll.
Such a sentence could impress upon people who haven’t followed the trial in detail the seriousness of Trump’s crimes, and it could lead voters to see the sentence as excessive in a case they previously didn’t consider particularly serious.
The lesson, as always, is to stay tuned: the potential impacts of 2024 are largely uncertain.
Another noteworthy moment
Although it is not strictly about the 2024 elections, we must not lose sight of what is happening inside the Trump movement after the verdict, because on January 6, 2021, we saw how it can seep out and have serious consequences, political and otherwise.
- Trump supporters have vowed to prosecute Democrats and prosecutors in retaliation.
- House Republicans have stepped up efforts to allege the “weaponization” of the justice system and government, but those efforts have not had much success.
- Trump isn’t trying to dissuade them, despite Fox News host Sean Hannity’s subtle attempt to steer him in that direction Wednesday night. In fact, Trump continues to allude suggesting that people may not be able to take it anymore.
- Some MAGA rhetoric has been even more extreme, with references to “war” and unrest, and reports of efforts to expose the personal details of jurors and others involved in Trump’s conviction.
All of this comes after Trump recently falsely claimed that the FBI had targeted him for assassination. Trump’s former White House counsel Ty Cobb called the claims “dangerous” and “inflammatory,” adding that “anyone in law enforcement should never be killed.”
It’s inevitable that it will explode in some way, and it could become one of the more significant factors in the 2024 election.
58 percent, 23 percent, 14 percent
The first number is the percentage of Republicans who said a YouGov poll conducted in April that a felon should not be allowed to serve as president.
The second is the percentage of people who answered that way as of this weekend, following President Trump’s conviction.
The third is the percentage of people who said so in the latest Economist/YouGov poll this week.
And that’s not the only big shift in how Republicans view Trump, the president, and crime — read my article here for more details.
