Will Trump’s Criminal Trials Matter in November?

Earlier today, I looked at some recent polling showing that many Americans aren’t all that impressed with the criminal trials that Donald Trump is facing and how they are being handled. Whether or not they impact his day-to-day approval numbers probably doesn’t matter all that much. But what about the long view as we move toward the general elections in November? Will anyone remember? More to the point, will this trial in New York sway anyone either toward or against the former president? This is really the only trial we’ll need to deal with because it’s the only one that’s currently expected to take place and reach a resolution prior to the election. While considering the question, I came across two opinion pieces on the subject from a couple of smart people, both writing at National Review. One is our former colleague Noah Rothman, who opines that Trump’s trial will certainly matter. 

It may be safe to attribute some of these responses to social-desirability bias. Most well-adjusted voters will experience at least a little discomfort when confessing their intent to elevate a convicted felon to the presidency. But we cannot chalk all these responses up to dishonesty. Surely, some of these voters really mean it. But persuasibility works both ways. If the Manhattan prosecutors cannot prove to a jury’s satisfaction the crime that Trump’s misdemeanor falsification of business records was allegedly designed to further, uncommitted voters who are already inclined to mistrust Trump’s prosecutors will be rightly convinced of the wisdom of their suspicion. At that point, those voters will be persuadable no more — they will have been persuaded.

An at least partially opposing view comes to us from Jim Geraghty. Jim argues that for the vast majority of voters, we’ve seen this movie before. Nothing that’s going on today or even being alleged in court is really “new news.” And few are likely to have their minds changed by anything that Alvin Bragg’s team says or does.

For those who don’t like Trump, those past allegations against him — and his frequent out-of-court settlements — are just more pieces on the mountain of evidence that he is a shady operator, quick to break promises or screw over business partners, and only out for himself. For those who like him, those past investigations are further evidence that everyone is always out to get him, that he lives with a giant bullseye on his back, and that every prosecutor wants to be the one who took down Trump.

Color me skeptical of the notion that a criminal conviction will cause some portion of current Trump supporters to abandon him — even a small portion. After all, guilt in civil trials has had no discernable impact on Trump’s support. Trump’s fanbase has its justifications and excuses lined up — “It’s a political witch hunt.”

Having had some time to consider the options, I’m having a hard time disputing that argument. Jim asks a valid question when he posits the difference in most voters’ minds between a Donald Trump who has been charged with a crime and a Donald Trump who has been acquitted of a crime. Would an acquittal sway the preferences of someone who had long since decided that the Bad Orange Man was indeed bad? Would a conviction change the mind of someone who was already convinced that the entire lawfare campaign against him was a witchhunt? 

That strikes me as unlikely. I will agree that there are still some number of undecided voters out there, but they are largely the people who don’t follow politics on a day-to-day basis and typically won’t start paying much attention until the final weeks before the election, assuming they show up to vote at all. Then there is the pool of voters who only turned 18 after November of 2020. But if they are politically interested and active, they are already being counted in the national polls of adults anyway. Trying to read the minds of “young voters” in this instance is likely a waste of time. Some of them will be in college now or are recent graduates. Many of those may prefer Democrats by default. Others will be those who went into the trades or the military. Trump may do better with them.

The biggest difference that I would point out as a counter to what both Noah and Jim are saying is that we’re dealing with a lot of the same voters as in 2020, but they aren’t facing the same choice. On one side, we have basically the same Donald Trump that we were dealing with four years ago, except he’s had some time off. He’s walking the same walk and talking the same talk for the most part. We all remember how he performed during his first term and how we were doing then. We don’t expect much of a difference if he returns to office.

But on the other side, the voters are seeing something else entirely. In 2020 they were being presented with Scranton Joe… Amtrack Joe. The supposedly moderate Democrat with a long record of public service who might make the occasional verbal gaffe, but he did so in an amusing fashion. It might even have seemed charming. People’s most recent memories of him in terms of performance were from the Obama years when he really didn’t do all that much (that we knew of at the time) and things were surprisingly going fairly well in the country, at least as compared to the present.

Now, however, Scranton Joe is long gone. Voters are evaluating the Joe Biden of the present. This is the Joe Biden who delivered the ongoing border crisis, a massive spike in inflation and prices, and unrest around the world. None of these things poll well at all. This Joe Biden has been revealed as having been involved in some very dodgy business dealings with his family at a minimum and a rather nasty stench is wafting out of the Oval Office no matter where you get your news each day. This is the Joe Biden whose occasional amusing gaffes have morphed into a painfully obvious condition of cognitive decline that is impossible to ignore no matter how inclined you might be to like him personally. 

In 2020, Donald Trump turned out to be unable to overcome Scranton Joe. Despite his ongoing criminal trials and everything else that comes along with his story, Trump may stand a considerably better chance against the 2024 edition of Joe Biden. And that may be true even among some voters who would have been predisposed to oppose Trump last time.