How Trump’s Tax Returns Could Affect The Election

On Sunday, a New York Times exposé on President Trump’s tax returns revealed decades of tax avoidance and millions of dollars in business losses over the past two decades. The picture painted by Trump’s returns is sharply at odds with the shrewd, deal-making image the president has tried to fashion as a real estate mogul and TV star on a show built around his business prowess, “The Apprentice.” Now, five weeks from Election Day, the question is will these new revelations affect the presidential race?

There are really two parts to that question: First, will The Times’s revelations change perceptions of Trump’s record as a businessman? And second, do perceptions of Trump’s business acumen matter in who voters decide to support?

We’ll take those one at a time, but spoiler alert: Past polling and research belies the notion that “nothing matters” when it comes to public perceptions about the president.

In May 2019, after The New York Times published a report that showed Trump had lost around $1.2 billion between 1985 and 1994, public polling found the story could lower public opinion regarding Trump’s business acuity. In a Politico/Morning Consult survey, 54 percent of voters said Trump had been a “very successful” or “somewhat successful” businessman, while only 36 percent thought he’d been unsuccessful. But after being presented with information about Trump’s financial losses, the share of voters who thought he’d been a successful businessman dropped to 43 percent. And that slide was felt across the board, falling more than 10 percentage points among Democrats and Republicans, and 8 points among independents. Meanwhile, another May 2019 poll from Fox News suggested that evidence against Trump’s business savvy could influence the attitudes of a small but meaningful share of voters: 20 percent said there was a “strong” or “some” chance that new revelations could affect their views of him.