New post-conviction polling for Donald Trump is just brutal

| 3:00 pm EDT June 3, 2024
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I’m always the one who says that we should never look at just one poll, and that we should instead look at the polling averages. Any one poll can easily by wrong by five points. But if you take the major polls and average them together, you’re much more likely to get an accurate result. That said, multiple major new polls have been conducted and released in the wake of Donald Trump’s felony conviction, and suffice it to say that they’re terrible for him.

Modern presidential general elections are almost never decided by more than a few points. This means that a swing of a few points, or even a fundamental shift within one persuadable demographic, is huge.

To that end, one new poll this weekend says that a slight majority of Americans agree with Trump’s conviction. Another new poll says that half of Americans think Trump should drop out of the race, including 14% of registered Republicans.

This is great news because it disproves the doomsday narrative that Trump’s conviction was somehow going to expand his popularity. If half of Americans agree that Trump is guilty and want him out of the race, and another chunk of Americans aren’t sure what to make of it, then it leaves Trump with only a minority of potential voters to work with.

Remember, it’s not about Trump’s base, which is already going to vote for him, and can only vote for him once. It’s about Republican voters who aren’t sure whether to vote for Trump or stay home. It’s about people in the middle who aren’t sure whether to vote for Biden or stay home. And it’s about motivating the Democratic base to turn out for Biden. Polling thus far suggests that Trump’s conviction helps Biden on all three of those counts.

As always, we have to wait for enough of the major polling outlets to conduct their polls post-conviction such that we can get a solid polling average. And that might take another week. But if the polls being released this weekend are even close to accurate, then it’s really bad news for Trump.

Remember, like I keep saying, modern presidential general elections tend to be close contests no matter the circumstances – and the Electoral College means that you can’t rely on a close win ending up being a win. We need to, simply put, run up the score. But these new polling numbers say that we’re in a position to do precisely that if we’re willing to put in the work required to win.