Dave Saunders/Pool/Getty Images
Former US President Donald Trump attends trial on charges of concealing hush money payments related to an affair in Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City on April 26, 2024.
CNN
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Former President Donald Trump seems to be defying political gravity time and time again. This year, he clinched the Republican presidential nomination while facing four different criminal charges.
Trump’s success may lead you to believe that he has upended conventional wisdom, that his legal problems are somehow helping him politically.
That may have been true in the primary, but the general election is a different ball game. Even if Trump’s legal troubles aren’t necessarily hurting him, there’s little indication that they’re helping him among a broad swath of voters.
Consider President Trump’s polling against President Joe Biden. If the case against Mr. Trump is favorable to him, Mr. Trump might think that it would be advantageous against Mr. Biden. In the end, attention shifted from the election to the hush money trial in New York.
If anything, Mr. Biden is someone who has gained momentum over the past few months, with both men securing their respective parties’ nominations. The exact amount of movement varies by pollster, but at the height of the Republican primary a few months ago, Biden had an average lead of about 2 points.
Currently, the race between Biden and Trump is essentially even nationally, with a small number of polling organizations favoring Biden within the margin of error (e.g. Marist College and Reuters/Ipsos); Some institutions support Trump within the margin of error (e.g., New York Times/Siena College and NBC News), while others have them tied exactly (e.g., Quinnipiac University).
You can also take a broader view. Trump’s first criminal indictment was filed in New York in late March 2023. Opinion polls back then showed essentially the same results as they do now. Some polls have Trump leading within the margin of error (such as Ipsos), some polls have Biden with a lead within the margin of error (such as Quinnipiac), and some polls have Mr. Trump leading within the margin of error (such as Ipsos); Institutions tied the race perfectly (e.g., Marquette University School of Law).
In fact, what I think is a bit of a misunderstanding of what the polling data is showing.
Take, for example, the New York hush money case. The data shows that most Americans don’t think President Trump has done anything illegal. Just 33% of Americans do, according to a new CNN/SSRS poll. Similarly, most Americans do not believe that the accusations, if true, would disqualify him from being president.
In other words, people have no problem running for President Trump even though this lawsuit is coming at him. But it is a logical leap to say from these data that Americans do not believe President Trump did anything wrong.
These polls show that Americans it’s not I’m satisfied with Trump’s actions. In addition to the 33% who think President Trump has done something illegal, those who think President Trump has done something unethical but not illegal related to his actions in New York. An additional 33%Two-thirds of the population believes he did it. something mistaken.
Additionally, a significantly higher share of the public agrees that President Trump acted inappropriately during the hush money trial (42%) than appropriately (25%). President Trump has been accused of violating the gag order, and he has given mini-speeches several times outside the courtroom.
The polls in the New York state case are noteworthy. That’s because New York state tends to have the lowest public support. For example, many believe that if any of the other three criminal charges are true, he should be disqualified from serving as president.
In other words, if President Trump were to increase his approval ratings due to any incident, it should be this one.
Trump’s lack of backlash means his central argument (that these incidents are somehow a political witch hunt against him) is not understood by many Americans. Of course, then.
In the latest CNN poll, 34% of Americans said President Trump was treated more harshly than other criminal defendants. Many said they were treated more leniently (34%) or the same (13%). In an NBC poll that asked similar questions, 50% of voters said they were held to the same standard as others accused of what kind of person he was, and 43% said It was learned that he believed he was being unfairly targeted.
In fact, according to a Times poll, people who pay close attention to Trump’s criminal case are more likely to support Biden than those who don’t.
Now, there is something to be said about the fact that Trump is raising so much money from these various indictments and court appearances. Literally, it turns out that many of the days President Trump raised the most money were the days he was in court.
The problem is that he also spends a lot of money on legal fees. According to the Financial Times, President Trump’s various committees have spent more than $75 million in legal fees. By comparison, the Biden campaign is spending a fraction of the money on litigation.
It’s unclear whether money raised through appeals to supporters during Trump’s legal troubles offsets the amount spent by his committee.
Perhaps the best news for Trump is that he is tied with Biden nationally and is likely to have an advantage in the battleground states that will decide the next president.
Of course, I don’t think that necessarily gives him that much flexibility, considering he’s running against an incumbent who most voters consider too old and who has an approval rating of nearly 40%.
