How the Trump Indictment is Playing Politically
Bottom Line: Today at 2:15 former President Donald Trump will become the first former president to be indicted. For what exactly, we don’t yet know – except that it’s related to hush money payments during the 2016 Presidential election cycle. How this story ends is even less certain. What we do know as of now are what the initial reactions from most Americans appear to be. In yesterday’s Q&A, when I addressed the question as to if the indictment potentially makes Donald Trump stronger, I brought you the themes from the initial polling which on the surface showed much of what one would expect. Most Democrats support the indictment while most Republicans don’t. But when digging a little deeper also showed a few interesting wrinkles. More Americans feel the indictment is politically motivated than approve of the indictment and notably, independents are less supportive of the indictment than the average partisan voter. Over the past day multiple different polls have poured in sampling different questions around how this has begun to play politically. Let’s start with the Republican Presidential Primary.
Three pollsters, Insider Advantage, Trafalgar and Yahoo News/YouGov have produced post indictment news samples and the average in those polls show Trump with a 32% lead over DeSantis – with support significantly above 50%. That compares to an average advantage of 16-points in polls preceding the indictment news. Trump’s support appears to have surged with his lead doubling among Republican primary voters. A rally around Trump effect appears to be underway in GOP circles. Then there’s the general election.
In the Yahoo News/YouGov poll Biden shows a 2% national advantage over Trump – which is equal to what the previous poll conducted two weeks prior had shown. Meanwhile, McLaughlin & Associates shows Trump with a 4% lead over Biden nationally – that's down 1% from their prior polling which was also conducted approximately two weeks prior as well. So essentially there appears to have been no overall movement by voters as to how they’d vote in the general election as a result of this news. Given how firm opinions tend to be regarding the view of voters towards both the current president and the former president, this perhaps isn’t all that surprising.
The net effect of what the initial reactions appear to be politically to the unprecedented indictment of Donald Trump is... Taking Donald Trump from being an early favorite to win the Republican nomination for president, to one who is a prohibitive favorite if he’s able to maintain support near current levels. This is also starting to be reflected in the offshore betting odds. Immediately preceding the indictment DeSantis was shown as being 3% more likely to be the next President of the United States than Trump was. Trump has now moved out to a greater than 6% advantage over DeSantis. Obviously, a lot can and may change before votes actually begin to matter. But it does appear the hill that DeSantis would have to climb if he is to enter this race just became much higher.