How the historic ruling against Trump will affect the presidential election

But in less than five months, voters across America will decide whether to send him back to the White House and serve another four years as the nation’s president.

Trump’s guilty verdict in the money probe is a first in an already unusual presidential election. With profound implications for the justice system and perhaps American democracy.

Trump, who turns 78 in June, is the first former president to be convicted of a criminal offense and the first to be the nominee of a major political party, giving Democrats plenty of material to attack him.

But in a polarized environment like the one that governs America, It’s unclear whether Trump’s new status as a felon will have any impact on the 2024 election.

“We live in a hyper-party system in which voters focus on so-called negative discrimination: they vote against the candidate they least like, not the candidate they support,” said political scientist Nicholas Higgins.

“Given this — especially since the allegations are already known and the Trump camp sees it as a political attack — some voters will believe their previous view of Trump was wrong because a jury found him guilty,” he noted. .

Despite his many legal troubles, the elections keep him in the running against President Joe Biden, with the former Republican president now facing prison time ahead of November’s elections.

There were immediate signs that the guilty verdict helped unite various factions of the Republican Party, at least in the short term, as Republicans showed support for their presidential candidate in Congress and in state capitols across the country. Additionally, his campaign is expected to benefit from an avalanche of donations.

Mogul’s poll results have remained neck-and-neck with Biden in national polls, while leading Democrats by narrow margins in most key swing states. Additionally, there are few studies on the impact of a guilty verdict, although such hypothetical scenarios are more difficult to predict.

In a recent ABC News/Ipsos poll, only 4% of Trump supporters said they would withdraw their support if he were convicted, although an additional 16% said they would reconsider.

Ahead of the ruling, the Trump campaign released a memo from its campaign team suggesting the impact of the investigation was “already building on the campaign in battleground states.”

Consultants of The Trump campaign argued that the case would help galvanize their core supporters.. WinRed, the fundraising platform, crashed because of so many donations.

Trump addressed a planned fundraising event in New York on Thursday night ahead of the ruling, said a person familiar with his plans who was not authorized to speak publicly. Two of his key campaign advisers, Susie Wiles and Chris Lacivita, were based in Palm Beach, Florida, where the campaign is based.

While it may take days or weeks to know for sure, Trump’s critics in both parties generally agree that there won’t be much political fallout, though some believe that hope will have at least a small impact on what might happen. It will be a close election.

When YouGov/Yahoo News asked Americans how they felt about the test in early May, 31% said they were not interested and 26% were interested.

For Nicholas Creel, a political scientist at Georgia College and State University, a ruling would break that apathy and hurt Trump’s chances. “Anything that has a measurable impact on a candidate’s support is important in November,” he added.

The judge set the sentence on July 11, four days before the start of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

The falsifying business registration charges each carry a sentence of up to four years in prison, though prosecutors have not said whether they are seeking prison terms. It is not clear whether the judge, who had warned earlier during the hearing that violating the gag order would face jail terms, would impose that sentence even if asked.

Sarah Longwell, founder of Republican Voters Against Trump, who conducts regular focus groups, recommended a guilty verdict. Biden could be helped by blocking the so-called “dual enemies.”, a term used to describe voters who dislike Trump or Biden. But most of all, he said, voters weren’t following the test very closely.

“The best thing about the trial is that it’s over”Longwell said, describing the courtroom proceedings as a distraction from more pressing campaign issues. “Now will be an opportunity to focus the narrative on who Trump is and what Trump’s second term will look like.”

In a recent Marist poll, two-thirds of those surveyed said it would not affect their vote.The rest were almost evenly split on whether they would do more or less to support Trump.

Higgins, who chairs the political science department at North Greenville University in South Carolina, expects about 1% of voters to switch from Trump to a third-party candidate or not vote at all.

“But don’t expect any change toward Biden because of this decision,” he went on.

However, other analysts say even a small drop in Trump’s approval rating could affect the election, which is expected to be decided in six or seven battleground states.

“A conviction would undoubtedly hurt Trump because the election would be decided by a few thousand votes in those states,” said Donald Nieman, a political analyst and history professor at Binghamton University in New York state.

Jared Carter, a professor at the Vermont College of Law and Graduate School, said that while the ruling’s impact is limited, it could embolden Trump’s core while alienating independents.

“When you’re talking about a close election in a few swing states, those independent voters, maybe moderate Republicans, make a big difference,” he told AFP.

With information from AP and AFP.