Trump has a big problem that could wipe out whatever polling advantage he enjoys: analysis
It's a little less than a year before the election and Donald Trump has been up and running his campaign for the early primary states for months. The political polls show Trump and President Joe Biden dancing back and forth between who is leading, with both always in the margin of error.
Legal expert Norm Eisen, pollster Celinda Lake and campaign researcher Anat Shenker-Osorio explained in The New York Times that there is one key detail that is being ignored in all of the polls. Most polls are asking whether voters would still support Trump if he is convicted by a jury of his peers -- and the polls consistently show that a conviction would damage him.
"Likely to be completed before Election Day remains Special Counsel Jack Smith’s federal prosecution of Mr. Trump for his alleged scheme to overturn the 2020 election, which had been set for trial on March 4, 2024," they wrote. "That date has been put on hold pending appellate review of the trial court’s rejection of Mr. Trump‘s presidential immunity."
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While the Supreme Court declined to hear Smith's appeal until the federal appeals court makes its decision, the case is being expedited to the normally slow court for Jan. 9. The Supreme Court will likely hear it on its rocket docket.
"Moreover, with three other criminal cases also set for trial in 2024, it is entirely possible that Mr. Trump will have at least one criminal conviction before November 2024," they explain.
The group was quick to preface its thesis with the warning that polls nearly a year away from the election are premature. The vast majority of voters aren't paying the slightest bit of attention this early. Most voters don't begin paying attention to the election until the final few months when debates begin airing.
"The negative impact of conviction has emerged in polling as a consistent through line over the past six months nationally and in key states," they write. "We are not aware of a poll that offers evidence to the contrary. The swing in this data away from Mr. Trump varies — but in a close election, as 2024 promises to be, any movement can be decisive. Yet we have seen the effect in several national surveys, like a recent Wall Street Journal poll. In a hypothetical matchup between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, Mr. Trump leads by four percentage points. But if Mr. Trump is convicted, there is a five-point swing, putting Mr. Biden ahead, 47 percent to 46 percent."
That's with Trump's campaign apparatus working hard in several states, and Biden's just beginning to take shape.
"In another new poll by Yahoo News-YouGov, the swing is seven points. In a December New York Times-Siena College poll, almost a third of Republican primary voters believe that Mr. Trump shouldn’t be the party’s nominee if he is convicted even after winning the primary," the editorial explained.
Drilling down into specific states like Michigan and Georgia, where Trump holds a lead, polls show that if Trump is convicted 46 percent in Michigan and 47 percent in Georgia aren't just not voting for him, they believe he should be disqualified from the presidency entirely.
The impact of the Trump conviction is mostly showing up among young voters and independents, whom polls show both swing decisively away from Trump if he becomes a convicted felon.