The decision to convict Trump has no effect on the presidential elections yet
Donald Trump’s historic criminal conviction has dominated media coverage in recent days, but the former president’s legal defeat has so far had only a modest impact on national polling about his race against President Biden.
Opinion experts said it would take a week or two to assess the true impact of Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying documents to cover up a payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.
The first national polls since Trump’s conviction on Thursday suggest the 2020 election will be as closely contested as it was in 2019. Also, no post-election polls have been conducted in the seven states that will decide the election.
Three polls found that a majority of Americans agreed with the decision, while another poll found a slight majority said it was “politically motivated”.
In a CBS News poll, 57% of those surveyed said the New York City jury was right in convicting Trump, while 43% said it was wrong. The same percentage of people said Trump received a fair trial, with Democratic and Republican partisans differing significantly on this question. Independents said Trump received a fair trial by a margin of 56% to 44%.
52% of registered voters asked in the Ipsos/Reuters poll said they believed the decisions were “primarily about fairly enforcing laws and upholding the rule of law,” while 46% said the decisions were “primarily a politically motivated effort to prevent Trump from returning to power.”
The White House.” This question was asked on the day of the verdict and the day after.
A Morning Consult poll found that 54% of voters agreed with the verdict, and the same percentage believed Trump committed a crime.
This was in contrast to a poll conducted by HarrisX overnight after the verdict, in which 51% said the verdict was “politically motivated”, while 49% said it was “fair and impartial”.
The Ipsos/Reuters poll had Biden leading by a slim 41% to 39% among registered voters, while the Morning Consult survey had the president ahead by 45% to 44%. The HarrisX poll had Trump ahead by 51% to 49%. All of these results are within the margin of error for the poll.
Experts say it’s hard to determine who low-information “swing” voters will support five months before the final voting day on Nov. 5.
“Asking people to predict their behavior in November is asking too much under any circumstances, but especially right now, because there’s still so much to happen, including the debates and the convention,” said Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll, which will conduct its next national survey later this month.