Republicans said verdict would hurt president’s standing, but data looks mostly the same with slight uptick for Biden.
After a Manhattan jury found Donald Trump guilty on 34 felony counts last week, Republicans rallied around the former president, insisting the verdict would only damage Joe Biden’s standing in the presidential election.
But some new polling data casts doubt upon that argument, as a small but crucial number of Americans in key voting blocs appear to be moving toward Biden in the aftermath of the verdict.
According to a post-verdict analysis of nearly 2,000 interviews with voters who previously participated in New York Times/Siena College surveys, Trump’s advantage over the president has narrowed from three points to one point. That shift may seem insignificant, but it could prove decisive in a close presidential election, as is expected in this year’s contest. In 2020, just 44,000 votes across three battleground states prevented a tie in the electoral college.
Perhaps more worrisome for Trump is the specific areas where he appears to be bleeding support. According to the Times analysis, disengaged Democratic-leaning voters and those who dislike both Trump and Biden were more likely to say that the verdict made them reconsider their options in the election.
Both of those voting groups have played a significant role in boosting Trump’s polling performance in recent months. Among those who voted for Biden in 2020 and previously indicated that they would back Trump this year, roughly one-fourth said they would now support the incumbent president. Voters who dislike both candidates, the so-called “double haters”, are viewed as particularly influential this year, and the Times analysis showed Trump losing more than one-fifth of his pre-verdict support among those voters.
Polling data compiled after Trump’s conviction is still somewhat limited, but at least one other post-verdict survey corroborated the Times’ findings. The Republican firm Echelon Insights conducted a study showing Biden with a two-point advantage over Trump among recontacted voters, while those same respondents’ answers indicated a tie between the two candidates before the jury delivered its verdict.
