What the polls can’t tell us about the Trump verdict’s effect on the election

The guilty verdict against Donald Trump in his New York hush money trial is a momentous news story in itself. What’s far less clear, and what no polling can predict, is the effect it will have on voters’ willingness to support Trump in the presidential election.

The guilty verdict against Donald Trump in his New York hush money trial is a momentous news story in itself. What’s far less clear, and what no polling can predict, is the effect it will have on voters’ willingness to support Trump in the presidential election. That’s not for a lack of data points. A number of pre-conviction surveys have already asked questions attempting to gauge the potential political fallout, and initial post-verdict polling provides a first look at how Americans are reacting to Trump’s conviction. But survey questions that ask voters to explain how their choices are affected by a news event – whether a debate performance or a criminal conviction – are notoriously difficult to answer or interpret, and commonly overstate the potential for movement in public opinion. At the same time, polling also shows that many people weren’t closely following the trial, meaning that any repercussions may not immediately emerge. Combined, these factors leave room for considerable uncertainty. An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, conducted during the trial and released before Thursday’s verdict, found 67% of registered voters predicting that a guilty verdict would make no difference to their vote. Fifteen percent said they’d be more likely to vote for Trump and 17% that they’d be less likely to do so. Among Trump’s current supporters, 7% predicted they would be less likely to vote for him if he were convicted. Sixty-eight percent said they didn’t think it would affect their vote, and another 24%, despite already supporting him, said a conviction would make them more likely to vote for him. That comports with other polling taken in the run-up to the verdict, when the idea of a conviction was still hypothetical. It also appears roughly in line with one of the first post-verdict polls. A Reuters/Ipsos survey conducted Thursday night and Friday found only about 1 in 10 Republicans saying that the verdict made them at least somewhat less likely to vote for Trump. Of course, many voters don’t answer such questions with statements about how likely they are to change their minds – instead, their responses often demonstrate how they already feel about the candidates. Inevitably, some of Trump’s staunchest supporters will say that the conviction makes them more likely to support him, and some of his staunchest opponents that it makes them less likely to do so – even though their votes were never in play in the first place.