Since the guilty verdicts in his New York trial, we’ve seen Donald Trump raise a staggering amount of money from Americans who are angry about the two-tiered justice system and energized to vote for him more than ever. Aside from the fact that Joe Biden and the Democrats will label Trump as a “convicted felon,” there hasn’t been much of a silver lining for them from the verdict, though they’re trying to find one.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll is getting a lot of buzz in the mainstream media after it found that roughly 10% of registered Republican voters said that Trump’s conviction would make them less likely to support him for president.
"The poll also found that a majority of Republican voters, 56%, said the outcome of the case would have no effect on their vote and 35% said they were even more likely to support Trump, who maintains his innocence,” reports Chris Pandolfo of Fox News. "Even so, the potential loss of a tenth of Republican voters could decimate the presumptive GOP nominee's chances to win back key battleground states President Biden claimed in his 2020 victory over Trump. That year, just 44,000 votes in Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin separated Biden and Trump from a tie in the Electoral College, according to NPR."
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The report added, "Among independent registered voters, 25% said Trump's conviction made them less likely to support him in November, compared to 18% who said they were more likely and 56% who said the conviction would have no impact on their decision."
Other polls have shown similar results, including a Morning Consult poll, which found that 54% of registered voters approve of the verdict while 39% disapprove. The same poll found that 51% of respondents think Trump should end his campaign, 42% think he should remain, and even 15% of Republicans think he should drop out.
On its face, it certainly sounds like these are problematic polls for Trump, and the left arguably has something to cling to for hope. But is it true?
Earlier this year, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 78% of Americans believed Joe Biden is “too old” for the presidency, including 71% of Democrats. This poll is virtually identical to an AP/NORC poll from last year that found that 77% of adults felt Biden is too old to serve another term — including 69% of Democrats. A mere year and a half into his presidency, three-quarters of Democrats wanted someone other than Biden as their party’s nominee.
Despite these polls, has there been any indication whatsoever that Biden’s advanced age and mental health problems are stopping the Democrats from supporting him? Did that make any of his primary challengers remotely competitive?
The power of incumbency and party loyalty are so strong that Democrats are willing to vote for a walking corpse. There’s little reason to believe that Trump’s advantage in the polls is because of the age issue either. Polls have consistently shown that the public largely approves of Trump’s handling of important issues more than they approve of how Biden has.
As these polls have made clear, a far larger share of Democrats think that Biden is too old to be president and wanted someone else to run in his stead than there are of Republicans who report being less likely to support Trump post-verdict.
Simply put, there’s little reason to believe that the verdict will have any greater impact on how Republicans vote in November than how Biden’s age and cognitive impairment will have on Democrats voting for him in November. Post-verdict match-up polls bear this out.
