Donald Trump’s Guilty Verdict Could Haunt Him With Independents: Poll

Donald Trump’s recent criminal conviction may come back to haunt him in November, according to a recent poll by Politico Magazine and Ipsos.

The former president and presumptive GOP presidential nominee was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records on May 30 in connection to hush money paid to adult-film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election. The case is among four criminal indictments that have been brought against Trump while he seeks a second term in the White House.

Preliminary polling suggests that Trump will face a heated contest with President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, on Election Day. Polling aggregator Five Thirty Eight projected on Sunday that Trump wins 51 times out of 100 election simulations, compared to Biden’s 49.

Success in November in such a tight race will likely come down to independent voters, and recent polling shows that Biden is favoring better with this demographic. In a YouGov America/Yahoo News poll conducted from June 3 to June 6, 41 percent of independents said they would support the president in the coming election, compared to 38 percent of independents who said they would choose Trump.

Biden may have been handed more good news after Ipsos/Politico released their survey Monday that asked over 1,000 American voters from June 7 to June 9 roughly a week after Trump was found guilty—about how their opinions were impacted by Trump’s conviction. Among the respondents who described themselves as an independent, 32 percent said Trump’s conviction makes them “less likely” to support him in November.

Among Republican voters, around one third said they were less likely to support the former president now that he is a felon. A majority of Democratic respondents (58 percent) said they are also less likely to vote for Trump.

Overall, 21 percent of independents said they were less likely to support Trump and that the conviction is “important” in shaping how they will vote in November. In comparison, only 7 percent of Republicans indicated that they were now less likely to support the former president and that the conviction is an “important” consideration in how they will vote. Forty percent of Democratic voters said they were less likely to vote for Trump and that his conviction was “important” for their vote.

Newsweek reached out to Trump’s campaign via email for comment on the poll results.

A significant amount of respondents in Ipsos/Politico’s poll also indicated that they have questions about how Trump’s hush money case was handled in court. The former president and his allies have maintained that the verdict was the result of a politically charged “witch hunt” and that the presiding judge, New York State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, is partial to Biden. Trump was found guilty by a 12-person jury in Manhattan.

When asked if they believe Trump’s verdict was the “result of a fair and impartial judicial process,” 27 percent on independent voters said no and another 24 percent responded, “don’t know.”

Senior writer for Politico Magazine Ankush Khardori pointed out in a column based on the recent Ipsos/Politico survey, “Taken as a whole, the results of the poll suggest that Americans’ views on the Trump verdict may still be malleable—and could get better or worse for Trump.”