How important will Donald Trump’s conviction in the New York hush money case be in November?
The obvious answer is that no one knows. Still, I think the ruling will be important, but not in a way that is easy to predict, or even impossible to predict.
So many of our immediate reactions revolve around polls. We talk about them not because they are super important, but because we don’t have much else to fall back on. Like the proverbial drunk looking for his lost keys because it’s lighter under the streetlight, we turn to the polls because, even if they don’t reveal much, at least they reveal something.
Several surveys conducted since Thursday’s verdict suggest that slightly more than half of Americans believe the jury got it right. A CBS poll found that few people’s opinions were changed by the verdict, but a small number of people viewed Trump more negatively. That’s not surprising, given that attitudes toward the trial are tied to attitudes toward Trump.
One could plausibly argue that this ruling would lead to Trump’s election loss if the opinions indicated by the latest polls remain constant in the roughly 150 days leading up to November 5. There is consensus among bipartisan experts that this election will be decided by a handful of votes in a handful of states, where a move away from Trump by just a few percentage points could be decisive.
But opinion is not uniform, at least not among the voters whose decisions will determine the outcome of the election.
Until recently, Trump enjoyed higher favorability ratings than at any time during his presidency, a combination of nostalgia for the pre-COVID-19 Trump era economy and dissatisfaction with Biden that led to Trump being more favorable than what he actually did as president.
No one knows what will happen over the next five months, but it is not unreasonable to think that the significance of the ruling will fade for everyone as time passes.
But that doesn’t mean it won’t have a lasting impact, given how close the race is and the voters who will decide it.
Many Trump supporters responded to the verdict by saying things like, “Trump won the election.” This expectation was born out of the belief that anger over the verdict would increase voter support for Trump. But so far, the evidence suggests the opposite.
It’s true that Republican anger over the ruling mobilized Trump supporters, which in turn attracted big donations to the Trump campaign, including from important first-time donors. This could be significant.
But an analytical error Trump supporters always make is the idea that attitudes toward Trump within the MAGA bubble extend to voters outside that bubble. Trump’s biggest supporters believe they represent America as a whole, which is one of the reasons they still believe America could not have voted to oust Trump in 2020.
It’s unclear how the ruling will change the behavior of candidates, let alone voters. If Biden exaggerates Trump’s status as a “felon,” it could underscore the view that Trump lacks a compelling case for reelection. It could also strengthen unfounded accusations that Biden engineered the prosecution to favor himself.
On the other hand, if Trump listens to his biggest supporters and indulges his own grievances (not a particularly big “if”), the election could become not a referendum on Biden, but on Trump and the chaos he will wreak.
I believe this lawsuit should never have been filed in the first place, but I also think it’s insane to say, as Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio argued, that this means “the end of country as we know it.”
Voters will care about everything, and to the extent that convicting Trump has any impact, it is likely to be an endorsement of an opinion most Americans already hold.
