15 percent of independents said that the New York City of conviction would make them more likely to support former President Donald Trump in 2024 election against incumbent President Joe Biden, with only 11 percent saying it would make them less likely, an NPR-Marist poll taken May 21 to May 23 shows. 74 percent said it would make no difference.
In addition, the poll had 10 percent of Republicans saying the conviction would make them less likely to vote for Trump if convicted and 7 percent of Democrats saying more likely to vote for Trump, a +3 percent advantage for Biden.
But when the independents are factored, with 15 percent saying more likely to support and 11 percent saying less likely, that’s a +4 advantage for Trump.
Overall, that would mean the conviction by Democratic prosecutors, the jury and the judge in the deep blue New York City might have been highly counterproductive to helping reelect Biden, as it appears to net Trump +1 percent on the question, and -1 percent for Biden.
Meaning, in an election where 160 million people might vote, could mean 1.6 million more voters coming Trump’s way and 1.6 million fewer for Biden, or +3.2 million on the net.
This type of result should be largely unsurprising, which has seen Trump jump into the lead in most national polls this election cycle despite his Mar a Lago residence in Florida being raided by the FBI and four different trials launched by Democrat prosecutors in New York City, Washington, D.C., Miami, Fla. and Fulton County, Ga., complete with the mugshot taken in Georgia.
All have been designed to test Trump’s political base and to break their support but, rather predictably, has only hardened their support, and appears to be weighing on independents—who appear to oppose on the margins political prosecutions of opponents.
Ironically, Democrats are doing this on a platform attempting to persuade the public that Trump, who is not in power and had no record of prosecuting political opponents when he was in power, is somehow the one who wants to prosecute his political opponents.
In response to the conviction, the Biden campaign issued a statement warning that “The threat Trump poses to our democracy has never been greater. He is running an increasingly unhinged campaign of revenge and retribution…”
And their solution was to arrest and convict Trump first — and maybe even lock him up (we’ll find out on July 11)! — to stop it, as if the only way to stop political prosecutions was to somehow do them more.
That makes Democrats’ argument a lot like saying the way to prevent a nuclear war is to launch your missiles first. In the case of political prosecutions, mutually assured destruction (which is still destruction) favors factions that actually don’t care about the rule of law. It’s not a deterrent but escalation.
So, how to respond?
Right off the bat, independents appear to lean towards Trump in light of the conviction, and so, for Republicans, the persuasion goals appear to be to shore up Republicans who were concerned about the conviction as a negative that the trial was unfair and politically motivated, the same message of which also can be used to maximize independents who are inclined to oppose throwing political opponents in jail.
If done correctly, Trump and Republicans can keep or expand independents and the few Democrats’ attitudes on the question who already opposed the prosecutions, while winning back most of the few Republicans who thought this made them less likely to support him.
For everyone else, the goal of the Trump campaign would be to outline how imprisoning political opponents is tyrannical as a negative for Biden. Trump can help that along by calling for restoring constitutional order and the civil society, but to be persuasive, he would need to resist the impulse for calling for the imprisonment of his political opponents in kind.
Instead, the goal should be to persuade enough independents and Democrats that political prosecutions are destroying our Constitution. Ahead of the 2024 election, this is a persuadable moment, but it might not be the one that Biden and Democrats were hoping for.
As it turns out, tyrannically throwing your political opponents into prison may in fact be deeply unpopular with non-partisan voters, who are the largest voting bloc, in a country where power is decided by the consent of the governed. Wow. What a shock!
In all seriousness, Democrats are tipping their hands that they know that prosecuting their opponent is viewed as tyrannical and is therefore unpopular, hence their desperate bid to convince voters that, no, Trump is somehow the tyrant. Good luck with that. Seeing is believing. As Trump stated yesterday, “This isn’t over.”
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.