Trump was convicted. A bigger verdict from US voters now awaits.
| WASHINGTON
The “new normal’’ is settling in. Former President Donald Trump is now a convicted felon, pending appeal, after Thursday’s verdict in the New York trial centering on hush money payments. But there are no easy assumptions about the impact of Mr. Trump’s conviction, and both campaigns in the Trump-Biden rematch agree that the “real verdict” will come on Election Day, Nov. 5.
“All of us who knew that there was no way [Mr. Trump] could be elected after the ‘Access Hollywood’ video in 2016 are being a little cautious right now,” says Dan Schnur, communications director for Republican Sen. John McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign and now an independent.
Why We Wrote This
With November elections just five months away, Donald Trump’s conviction Thursday will test voters’ tolerance for the former president’s actions, as well as public confidence in American justice.
That video, in which Mr. Trump boasted crudely about grabbing women, was leaked a month before the 2016 election. That November he lost the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton but won in the Electoral College.
Today, in the RealClearPolitics average of major polls taken preconviction, Mr. Trump has a razor-thin lead over President Joe Biden. All eyes are now on postconviction surveys. An overnight poll by YouGov of more than 2,600 U.S. voters found that half of Republicans are even more likely to vote for Mr. Trump since the verdict.
The “new normal” is settling in. Former President Donald Trump is now a convicted felon, pending appeal, after Thursday’s verdict in the New York trial centering on hush money payments to a porn star. Supporters are rallying to his side, donating money, and raising loud objections to what many of them see as a rigged legal system.
Meanwhile, Democrats who have long dreamed of seeing Mr. Trump behind bars – still improbable but not impossible – are cheering. Others, including President Joe Biden, are playing things more cautiously. Candidates in both parties running for other offices downballot are also having to strategize around the new reality of a ticket-topper convicted of 34 felonies.
But in the Trump-Biden presidential rematch that’s shaping up, there’s at least one point both campaigns agree on: that the “real verdict” will come on Election Day, Nov. 5. And with a little over five months to go, these early days posttrial are a time for wariness, not easy assumptions about the impact of Mr. Trump’s conviction, political analysts say.
Why We Wrote This
With November elections just five months away, Donald Trump’s conviction Thursday will test voters’ tolerance for the former president’s actions, as well as public confidence in American justice.
“All of us who knew that there was no way [Mr. Trump] could be elected after the ‘Access Hollywood’ video in 2016 are being a little cautious right now,” says Dan Schnur, communications director for Republican Sen. John McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign and now an independent.
That video, in which Mr. Trump boasted crudely about grabbing women, was leaked a month before the 2016 election, and appeared to doom the Republican nominee’s chances of becoming president. Indeed, that November he lost the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton, but won in the Electoral College.
Polls show Trump’s base remains loyal
Today, in the RealClearPolitics average of major polls taken preconviction, Mr. Trump has a razor-thin lead over Mr. Biden. All eyes are now on postconviction surveys. An overnight poll by YouGov of more than 2,600 U.S. voters found that half of Republicans are even more likely to vote for Mr. Trump since the verdict, but the longer-term impact of the verdict on voter behavior remains to be seen.
Plenty of polls taken pre-verdict showed a small slice of the GOP electorate unwilling to vote for Mr. Trump if he was convicted, or at least reconsidering support for him. But such polls can’t simulate the real-world conditions of news coverage and the responses of public figures, including Mr. Trump, experts on polling say.
On Friday, the former president spoke for over a half hour at Trump Tower in New York, calling the trial “rigged” and the judge who presided the “devil.” Mr. Trump also said he would appeal the conviction, which included a finding of guilt on 34 counts of falsifying business records over hush money payments to porn actor Stormy Daniels, with whom he allegedly had a sexual encounter.
For more than six weeks, the trial required Mr. Trump to be present in the courtroom. Now that it’s over, he has more time to campaign – albeit with uncertainty about what a July 11 sentencing will bring. This means more opportunity to refresh public impressions and make his pitch for another term.
For Democrats, the job now is to talk about the hush money case in the context of the other three criminal cases pending against Mr. Trump, says Karen Finney, a Democratic strategist. Those cases center on alleged mishandling of classified documents, his alleged effort to overturn the 2020 election, and a racketeering case in Georgia over his alleged attempt to overturn that state’s 2020 election result.
“Is this someone you really want to trust your future to?” she suggests as a campaign message.
Democrats to focus on top-of-mind issues
More broadly, Ms. Finney and others suggest, Mr. Biden and the Democrats also need to focus on the issues that are top of mind for many voters, such as the economy.
Mr. Schnur, the former GOP strategist, notes that Mr. Biden has been struggling with elements of his base for months over issues such as the war in Gaza and climate change. The risk to Mr. Biden is that they don’t vote or vote third-party.
“Many of those disaffected progressives say that, because Biden hasn’t been as aggressive on their issues as they want, there’s no real difference between the two candidates,” says Mr. Schnur, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communications. “The question is whether the Biden campaign can use this [verdict] to convince the Democratic base that there is a real difference between him and Trump.”
So far, both Mr. Biden and his reelection campaign have been reactive. Right after the verdict, the White House counsel’s office said simply, “We respect the rule of law, and have no additional comment.” The Biden campaign fundraised off the verdict, sending emails stating that the only way to keep Mr. Trump out of office is “at the ballot box.”
On Friday, Mr. Biden himself commented on the Trump verdict for the first time, calling Mr. Trump’s morning remarks “unhinged.”
“Downballot” impact and fundraising
But another event Friday brought home the challenge the president faces in holding the Democratic coalition together: the departure of Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia from the party ranks. Senator Manchin announced that he has re-registered as an independent, raising speculation he could run for governor or even reelection to the Senate under that banner.
For some Republican candidates downballot, the Trump conviction may prove a double-edged sword. In solid-blue Maryland, popular former moderate GOP Gov. Larry Hogan is running a competitive race for the Senate, and needs to attract both pro-Trump Republicans and anti-Trump Democrats in November.
As Thursday’s verdict was about to be read, Mr. Hogan – a Trump critic – urged Americans to “respect the verdict and the legal process.” Not long after, senior Trump campaign adviser Chris LaCivita fired back: “You just ended your campaign.”
For other Republicans, the Trump conviction has produced a reported windfall in fundraising – as it did for Mr. Trump himself. On Friday morning, the Trump campaign said it had raised $38.4 million following the verdict, much of it reportedly from first-time donors. Traffic to the fundraising site was so strong that it temporarily crashed, according to the campaign.
In Arizona, Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, who is running against former TV anchor and Trump loyalist Kari Lake in the GOP primary for Senate, said his fundraising page crashed, too.
“It’s not just Trump. People like myself are benefiting” from the verdict, Sheriff Lamb said Thursday. “I just did a fundraiser tonight and these folks were upset.”
Staff writer Story Hinckley contributed to this article.
