Will Trump’s guilty verdict hurt him? Read this story (not the polls).
Donald Trump,2024 Presidential Election,Crime,Justice,Trump Indictments,Polls,Public Opinion,Campaign Finance
Donald Trump’s pollsters argued he could weather a guilty verdict — that a conviction in a case prosecuted by a Democrat in a deep-blue state was already priced into his political brand with the American public.
They’re about to find out whether they’re right.
For weeks, even as the trial and its tawdry details unfolded, public polling barely budged in the presidential race. But a conviction throws Trump into entirely uncharted territory, with at least some polling suggesting Trump could pay a price in November.
Here are five takeaways from the verdict — and what it could mean for the now-convicted former president’s campaign:
The verdict may matter at the margins (and the margins may matter)
The guilty verdict isn’t going to tell Americans anything they don’t already know about Trump. The details of the case were widely reported even before the trial began. In an increasingly polarized political environment, the number of truly undecided voters is small, and most Americans, polls show, view the hush money case as less serious than Trump’s other legal cases.
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