Expect The Election To Closely Mirror Public Opinion On Trump's Criminality

 A very telling poll was released by NPR/Marist late last month that broke down voter sentiment on Trump's mounting indictments.  According to the poll, 51% of Americans say Trump has done something illegal, 27% say he’s done something unethical but not illegal, and 19% say he’s done nothing wrong.  Discussed at length on "PBS Newshour" under the caption of "More Trouble for Trump", the opposite was actually true as it shows that, at worst, the electorate of 2020 has been locked in place, with the election poised to come down to a few thousand votes in a handful of swing states just like last time.

Obviously polling is hardly an exact science, now more than ever, but for the sake of argument let's imagine this one is on the nose.  The 51% of Americans who say Trump did something illegal is the exact percentage Joe Biden got in 2020.  The combination of 46% of Americans who say he's done nothing wrong or simply done something unethical is just shy of the 47% that Trump got in 2020.  It's hard to imagine anybody who said Trump's conduct was less than illegal, despite all evidence to the contrary, would under any circumstance be a Biden voter.  The far greater likelihood is that, after a Trump-led insurrection on the Capitol, two impeachments, and a slate of felony indictments that would send anybody else to prison, the American electorate hasn't budged an inch from this time in November 2020.

And honestly, that 51-46 breakdown of Trump's criminality likely represents a best-case scenario for Biden if his election fundamentals don't decline in the next 18 months due to the economy or other factors.  A sour economy would likely lead to a segment of that 51% who believes Trump broke the law to vote for him anyway.  That may potentially be true even if the economy is robust.  

But of course the national popular vote scarcely matters.  Voter turnout was elevated across the board in 2020 but it's far from a sure thing that the prospect of a Biden second term will be as motivating to the few thousand voters in the handful of states who decided the election last time and are poised to decide it again this year.  Biden could win the popular vote 51-47 in 2024 just as he did in 2020 but still fail to get 270 electoral votes because soft turnout in Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia subtracts a mere 46,000 collective votes from his total.

Is it possible more voters will be persuaded that Trump is a criminal as the process plays out?  Maybe a little, but if it does I think it's more likely to bear electoral fruit in the Republican primary than the general election.  While Trump remains a solid favorite for the GOP nomination, there's an opening for a well-timed surge by a challenger willing and able to exploit Trump's legal woes at a particularly vulnerable moment.  It's odds-against, but the only way Trump's apologists will be persuadable is if the message is coming from another Republican, one whose conservative bona fides are not in doubt.  If Trump gets the nomination, then it's too late for breaking through to that 47% and convincing them he's the crook that he is.  To a person, these voters can be counted upon to whistle past graveyards and will not be persuadable under any circumstance.

While the New York Times/Siena poll released last week showing Trump and Biden tied at 43 seems believable and comes from an above-average pollster, the high number of undecideds make it hard to glean much from it.  This Marist poll measuring opinions on Trump's criminality strikes me as the clearest snapshot in time we have this summer, a reality check for those who've convinced themselves of Trump fatigue or the salience of the rising tide of indictments.  I put myself on record last month saying I thought Biden was a narrow favorite for re-election, at least against Trump, given the improvement in the nation's fundamentals so far in 2023.  But I felt then and now that even with most things going right, the election will once again be breathtakingly close.  The Marist poll results certainly back up that assertion.