When a Manhattan jury found Donald Trump guilty on 34 criminal counts in his hush money/falsified business records trial, the former president's hardcore MAGA base didn't become any less supportive of him. Nor did the verdict change the voting plans of President Joe Biden's staunch supporters, who have long since ruled out the possibility of voting for Trump.
MAGA Republicans predicted that the verdict would move independents and swing voters in Trump's direction. But Salon's Tatyana Tandanpolie, in an article published on June 19, stresses that the verdict appears to be making many independents less likely to vote for Trump in November.
Tandanpolie notes that according to a Politico/Ipsos poll released on June 17, 21 percent of independent voters are less included to support Trump following the verdict.
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Thom Reilly, a public affairs professor at Arizona State University, told Salon, "We've clearly seen that (the conviction is) not making a difference with Democrats and Republicans. So, it makes sense that the one group that perhaps it may move the needle on and impact how they vote are independents."
Robert Lieberman, who teaches political science at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, told Salon that it remains to be seen how great an impact the conviction will ultimately have with independents and swing voters.
Lieberman noted, "A lot of those voters are probably also people who are among the people who feel, right now, that they're not energized by the choice between Biden and Trump."
Many national polls released in June are showing a very close race.
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Biden and Trump are tied in an NPR/PBS/Marist poll released on June 18, while a Morning Consult poll released a day earlier finds Biden ahead by 1 percent. And Trump is ahead of Biden by 2 percent in a Reuters/Ipsos poll that came out on June 13.
Lieberman told Salon, "It's going to be decided by a very small number of votes in a few states that are very close. It doesn't take a big swing of a large number of voters to change the outcome in a state like Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona."
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Read Tatyana Tandanpolie's full Salon article at this link.
