A jury of 12 New Yorkers was unanimous in deciding that former US President Donald Trump is guilty of the charges against him for falsifying accounting records to conceal the payment to a former porn actress to buy her silence. But the impact on his electoral prospects remains to be determined.
The Republican billionaire, who was found guilty of all 34 charges against him this Thursday in New York, is immersed in the race to win a second presidential term. The verdict, in fact, does not prevent him from appearing.
This case, which has further polarized the United States, has generated months of television coverage and bitter denunciations from supporters of both sides, but the general public, analysts and pollsters expect the reaction to be collective apathy.
“We live in a hyper-partisan system in which voters focus on what is called negative partisanship: they vote against the candidate they least like, not for a candidate they support,” said political scientist Nicholas Higgins.
“With this in mind – and especially because the accusations are already known and the Trump camp has framed it as a political attack – few voters will be convinced that their previous view of Trump was wrong because the jury found him guilty,” he pointed out.
Trump, who will turn 78 in June, is the first former president found criminally guilty and the first convicted person to be the candidate of a major political party, giving Democrats plenty of material to attack him on the eve of the November electoral rematch with President Joe Biden.
It was proven that the Republican had falsified business records to hide, before the 2016 elections, a payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels for her silence about a sexual encounter she alleges they had.
The sentence will be set on July 11, four days before the Republican Party convention at which Trump is expected to be inaugurated as a presidential candidate.
– “Big difference” –
The mogul’s poll results remained stable throughout the trial, and he remains neck and neck with Biden in national polls, while leading the Democrat by a narrow margin in most of the key swing states.
Two-thirds of respondents in Marist’s latest survey said a conviction would not influence their vote, while the rest were almost evenly divided on whether it would make them more or less likely to support Trump.
Higgins, chair of the political science department at the University of North Greenville in South Carolina, expects about 1% of voters to switch from Trump to a third-party candidate or not vote at all.
“But it is not to be expected that there will be any change towards Biden because of this decision,” he advanced.
Other analysts maintain, however, that even a marginal decline in Trump’s percentage of support could affect an election that is expected to be decided in six or seven battleground states.
“Given that the election will be decided by a few thousand votes in those states, a conviction will undoubtedly hurt Trump,” said Donald Nieman, a political analyst and history professor at Binghamton University in New York state.
Jared Carter, a professor at Vermont College of Law and Graduate School, said that while the impact of the ruling would be little, it could even embolden Trump’s core while alienating independents.
“And when you’re talking about a close election in a few swing states, those independent voters, maybe moderate Republicans, make a big difference,” he told AFP.
– “Fundamental in November” –
Ray Brescia, associate dean for research at Albany Law School, said Thursday’s decision has special significance as the only likely verdict in the various court cases Trump faces before the election.
“It is difficult to say precisely how many voters will really move away from Trump. But even a small change could have enormous consequences,” he told AFP.
When YouGov/Yahoo News asked Americans how they felt about this trial in early May, 31% said they were not interested, while 26% were interested.
For political scientist Nicholas Creel of Georgia College and State University, a ruling would likely break that apathy and hurt Trump’s chances.
“Anything that has a measurable effect on support for either candidate could well prove pivotal in November,” he added.
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