WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump's conviction on 34 felony counts on Thursday is likely to become a major issue in the presidential race but will likely have little effect on his chances of winning against Democrat President Joe Biden, political experts said.
An overwhelming majority of voters said the outcome of Trump's trial, who pleaded not guilty in the final days of the 2016 presidential election to charges that he falsified business documents to hide hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels, would not change how they supported or opposed him.
In a Newsday/Siena College poll of Long Island voters, 69% of respondents said their opinion of Trump would not change even if he was convicted. The poll, conducted May 13-15, has a margin of error of plus or minus 5.9 percentage points.
“We're in the midst of this unprecedented event, but the vast majority of voters are saying, 'No matter what the outcome is, it doesn't matter to me,'” Don Levy, director of the Siena College Research Institute, told Newsday on Thursday.
Mr. Levy said that while polling showed more than 60 percent of Long Island voters were following the trial closely, the fact that cameras were banned in Judge Juan M. Marchan's lower Manhattan courtroom likely worked to Mr. Trump's advantage.
“If there had been cameras in the courtroom, it would have been well-watched on television for at least a few days and would have generated a much greater response,” Levy said.
A Marist College/NPR/PBS NewsHour poll released Thursday found that 67% of voters surveyed nationwide said a conviction would not change their voting behavior. Just 17% said it would make them less likely to vote for Trump. The poll, conducted May 21-23, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.
“Despite Biden's campaign and Trump's appearances in court, the presidential election has been and will remain close,” said Lee M. Miringoff, president of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion Research. “In this rematch, it's as if voters are saying, 'Tell me something I don't already know about Biden and Trump.'”
Michael Dawidziak, a Republican strategist who advised the campaigns of the late President George H.W. Bush, said the trial was unlikely to hurt Trump's poll numbers because most voters were already familiar with details of the hush-money allegations, which first were reported in 2018.
“I think there are bigger issues for people, whether it's immigration, whether it's inflation, whether it's reproductive rights. There are bigger issues that people are going to look at when they're deciding whether to vote for Donald Trump or Joe Biden,” Dawidziak told Newsday.
Lawrence Levy, director of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University, said if Biden can appeal to some of the 17% of voters who said they wouldn't vote for Trump because of the ruling, it could help him close the gap in key battleground states.
“Even a small 5% change, especially in the three big battleground states, would be a huge, perhaps decisive, change,” Levy told Newsday in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Republican campaign strategist Susan Del Percio said Thursday's ruling could help Biden “push away” Republicans who are unhappy with Trump, including those who voted for former GOP presidential nominee Nikki Haley.
But Del Percio, who lives in Manhattan, told Newsday that while the allegations were disturbing, they were nothing new and nothing game-changing in the political race.
The Manhattan district attorney's case was the first of four criminal cases against Trump to go to trial. The others relate to his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, his mishandling of classified documents after he left office and his alleged attempts to influence the outcome of the 2020 election in Georgia.
