Republican elected officials and members of Donald Trump’s campaign staff have insisted that his conviction on 34 felony counts in a hush-money and election interference trial would make him a stronger presidential candidate because, they said, voters would see the injustice of the trial and guilty verdict.
But a fresh New York Times poll, released Wednesday afternoon, circled back to people who had previously told pollsters that they would vote for Trump — the former president and presumptive Republican presidential — and the results point to a small but substantial shift toward Democratic President Joe Biden.
It’s one of the biggest questions in the wake of Donald J. Trump’s conviction: Did the verdict change anyone’s mind?
Early on, the answer appears to be an equivocal “yes.”
In interviews with nearly 2,000 voters who previously took New York Times/Siena College surveys, President Biden appeared to gain slightly in the aftermath of Mr. Trump’s conviction last week for falsifying business records.
The group favored Mr. Trump by three points when originally interviewed in April and May, but this week they backed him by only one point.
While the Times points out that there’s no way of knowing whether this is an indication of a wider trend, it nonetheless shows Trump’s support has weakened.
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While Trump is holding on to 93% of those who told the poll that they would vote for him, he has leaked 7% — 3% who say they’re now voting for Biden and 4% who are undecided.
Democrats believe Trump will lose more support as the November election nears and voters realize that Trump is facing three more sets of criminal indictments. They also believe that Trump’s orchestration of the overturning of reproductive rights, his extreme policies, vows of revenge against his political opponents and other issues will move centrist voters toward Biden.
More from the Times:
... the slight movement overall toward Mr. Biden is broadly in line with other recent surveys. In a Reuters/Ipsos survey taken immediately after the verdict, 10 percent of Republicans said Mr. Trump’s conviction made them less likely to support him in the fall.
Another recontacting study by Echelon Insights, a Republican firm, found Mr. Biden gaining two points compared with its previous survey.
In a Times/Siena poll of six battleground states conducted in November, about 7 percent of Mr. Trump’s supporters said they would switch their support to Mr. Biden if Mr. Trump were to be convicted and sentenced to jail in an unspecified criminal trial. Other pre-verdictpolls asking specifically about the Manhattan hush money trial found a similar share of Mr. Trump’s supporters nationally who said they intended to switch their support if there were a guilty verdict.
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