New Polling Shows the Real Fallout From the Trump Conviction

A new POLITICO Magazine/Ipsos poll shows that Trump�s criminal conviction
hurts him with independents.
Donald Trump speaks in court.

In the weeks since the verdict, both parties have sought to shape the
public�s initial reaction, with Republicans largely denouncing it and
Democrats citing the result as further evidence that former President
Donald Trump is unfit for office. | Pool photo by Charly Triballeau

By Ankush Khardori

06/17/2024 05:00 AM EDT

Ankush Khardori is a senior writer for POLITICO Magazine and a former
federal prosecutor at the Department of Justice, where he specialized in
financial fraud and white-collar crime. He has also worked in the private
sector on complex commercial litigation and white-collar corporate defense.
His column, Rules of Law, offers an unvarnished look at national legal
affairs and the political dimensions of the law at a moment when the two
are inextricably linked.

Donald Trump�s criminal conviction didn�t instantly upend the 2024
presidential race. But the results of a new poll should be worrying for
Trump.

In the weeks since the verdict, both parties have sought to shape the
public�s initial reaction, with Republicans largely denouncing it and
Democrats citing the result as further evidence that Trump is unfit for
office. To figure out how this unprecedented moment is being processed by
the electorate, POLITICO Magazine partnered with Ipsos in a new survey.

Among the most notable findings in our poll: 21 percent of independents
said the conviction made them less likely to support Trump and that it
would be an important factor in their vote. In a close election, small
shifts among independent and swing voters could determine the outcome.

And yet there is also good reason to believe that Trump and his allies�
efforts to discredit the prosecution and conviction have cast doubt on the
validity of the verdict among many people and limited the potential fallout
for the former president-turned-felon.

A sizable number of Americans, including independents, question whether the
verdict was the result of a fair and impartial process. And although most
respondents rejected the idea that the prosecution was brought to help
President Joe Biden, a large number (43 percent of all respondents) either
strongly or somewhat agreed that was the rationale for the case.

Taken as a whole, the results of the poll suggest that Americans� views on
the Trump verdict may still be malleable � and could get better or worse
for Trump.

There are plenty of upcoming events and variables that could change public
opinion before November, to say nothing of the ongoing efforts by political
operatives on both sides of the aisle to influence (or not) public
perceptions. That includes Trump�s sentencing in Manhattan (July 11), which
could entail a period of incarceration, as well as Manhattan District
Attorney Alvin Bragg�s testimony before Congress about the case (July 12),
where Republicans are sure to hammer him.

The recent conviction of Hunter Biden on gun charges and a scheduled trial
in September on tax charges could also influence Americans� perceptions,
particularly since those cases dramatically undermine Trump and
Republicans� claims that the former president has been the victim of a
�weaponized� Justice Department.

In the wake of Trump�s guilty verdict, we also sought to measure
Americans� trust in key figures in the criminal justice system � including
lawyers, judges and juries � and compared the results against a survey that
was taken roughly a year ago, as Trump�s criminal prosecutions were still
getting underway. The data showed a drop in levels of trust among
Republicans in particular.

But the least trusted actors in the legal system are not the lawyers
prosecuting or defending the cases, or even the kind of state judges
presiding over Trump�s case. They are the Supreme Court justices
themselves, whose public approval has taken a considerable hit in recent
years thanks to unpopular rulings issued by the conservative supermajority
and a series of rolling ethical controversies involving Republican
appointees Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.

This poll was conducted from June 7-9 and had a sample of 1,027 adults, age
18 or older, who were interviewed online; it has a margin of error of plus
or minus 3.2 percentage points for all respondents. This is the fourth poll
on the Trump prosecutions that POLITICO Magazine has conducted in
partnership with Ipsos since last summer.

Here are the key findings.

1. Trump�s Conviction Is an Electoral Liability � Particularly Among
Independents

The notion suggested by some pundits that a conviction might help Trump in
the general election was always deeply counterintuitive, and our post-
verdict numbers rebuff that prediction.

A plurality of respondents in our poll (38 percent) reported that Trump�s
conviction would have no impact on their likelihood to support Trump for
president, but the results were decidedly lopsided among those who said it
would affect their support. Thirty-three percent of respondents said that
the conviction made them less likely to support Trump, while only 17
percent of respondents said that it made them more likely to support Trump.

The results were worse for Trump among respondents who said they were
political independents. Thirty-two percent of them said that the conviction
made them less likely to support Trump. Only 12 percent of them said that
it made them more likely to support Trump.

2. Trump�s Conviction Could Drive Voters Away from Him

It is one thing for someone to say that the verdict makes them more or less
likely to support Trump, but more important is whether the issue actually
helps determine their vote, particularly given the array of other issues �
the economy and immigration, to name just two � that are clearly important
to many voters this year.

In an effort to isolate the effect of the verdict, we also asked
respondents how important the conviction would be in deciding how they vote
in November. Here too, the results were not good for Trump.

Twenty-two percent of respondents said that the conviction is important to
how they will vote and that it makes them less likely to support Trump.
Only 6 percent of respondents took the other side of that question �
reporting that the conviction is important to how they will vote and that
it makes them more likely to support Trump.

A nearly identical net-negative effect showed up among independents.
Twenty-one percent of independents reported that they were less likely to
support Trump and that the conviction is important to their vote. Just 5
percent of them said that the conviction is important to how they will vote
and that it makes them more likely to support Trump.
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3. Many Americans Remain Skeptical of the Verdict

There is, however, a silver lining for Trump: The numbers could be worse.
In fact, our poll showed that a sizable number of Americans harbor
reservations about the prosecution and the verdict.

We asked respondents, for instance, whether they thought that the guilty
verdict was the result of �a fair and impartial judicial process.� A
plurality of respondents said yes (46 percent), while others either
disagreed (32 percent) or said that they did not know (19 percent).

Those trends largely held among the subset of independents, with a
plurality of them saying that they thought that the verdict was the result
of a fair and impartial process (46 percent), while others disagreed (27
percent) or said that they did not know (24 percent).

4. Many Americans Question the Origins of the Prosecution

We also asked several questions designed to probe whether and to what
extent Americans associated the case with a partisan effort to prevent
Trump from being reelected, as he has repeatedly claimed. Although there is
no meaningful evidence that the prosecution was designed to prevent Trump�s
reelection, the numbers suggest that Trump has succeeded in casting doubt
on the integrity of the prosecution.

We asked respondents whether they thought that President Joe Biden was
�directly involved� in the decision to bring the case. A majority of
respondents either said yes (29 percent) or that they did not know (25
percent).

The numbers were even more favorable to Trump when we asked whether they
believed that the Justice Department was �directly involved� in the
Manhattan DA�s decision to prosecute Trump (despite a similar lack of
evidence to support this view). Roughly a third of respondents said that
they thought that DOJ was directly involved (36 percent) while another
third (34 percent) said that they did not know.

5. Many Americans Believe that the Prosecution Was Brought to Help Joe
Biden

We also asked respondents whether they thought that the prosecution was
brought to help Joe Biden.

Most respondents (51 percent) disagreed with the claim, but a still-sizable
chunk of them (43 percent) agreed that the case had been brought to help
Biden.

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