Don’t assume it will benefit him

Former President Trump and his allies have maintained since his New York conviction that the verdict would ultimately go in his favor.

They can easily get it wrong.

To be sure, no one knows what the political ramifications of the verdict will be, given that the country is again treading in uncharted territory. Trump is the first former president to be convicted of a felony, bringing the total to 34.

The Trump campaign claims that the result infuriated its supporters (which is apparently true) and led to a surge in fundraising.

The Trump campaign claimed on Friday that it had raised a massive $34.8 million in just seven hours after the ruling was handed down the previous day.

Conservative commentators have increasingly argued the former president is facing a politically motivated prosecution aimed at sabotaging his chances of retaking the White House in November.

But there is an equally compelling argument that the ruling would hurt rather than help Trump, which Democrats argue could tilt the election in Biden’s favor.

A criminal conviction for Trump could alienate some of the swing voters who would have otherwise supported him, create hesitation among those who are still undecided and seep into the minds of people who don’t want to follow every political development.

Even before the verdict was announced, it was clear that some Republicans were skeptical of Trump.

Former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley continues to garner votes in the Republican primary she dropped out of more than two months ago. Earlier this month, she won about 20% of the vote in the primaries in Indiana, Maryland and Nebraska.

This non-Trump “protest vote” seems at least as important as Democrats’ tendency to vote “unconditionally” to express opposition to Biden’s policies regarding Israel and Gaza.

What’s more, polls show roughly the same share of voters who simply don’t believe the claim that Trump’s conviction is proof he was the victim of an evil liberal alliance.

An Economist/YouGov poll released Wednesday predictably found that an overwhelming majority of Republicans (72%) believe the investigations that led to Trump’s prosecution were unfair, but still more than one in four believe those investigations were fair (10%) or don’t know whether they were fair or unfair (16%).

In a follow-up poll, Friday Morning YouGovThe poll found that 10% of Republicans and 27% of independents said a conviction made them less likely to vote for Trump.

Trump’s defenders will point out that far more people than skeptics say the ruling will not affect their voting intentions — 34 percent of Republicans and 39 percent of independents.

But that may not matter, given that the November election is likely to be close.

An average of polls maintained by The Hill and Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ) gave Trump a slight 1.5 percentage point lead over Biden as of Friday evening, and in three battleground states, from Pennsylvania to Michigan to Wisconsin, Trump has an advantage of less than 2 points.

“Elections are going to be decided by very small margins,” said progressive strategist Jonathan Tasini. “You just need to hit a small number of voters in maybe half a dozen states and that’s it.”

Tasini said it was “pretty clear” that convicting Trump would have that effect.

He also argued that the extent to which a conviction energizes Trump’s MAGA base could ultimately matter, because it would simply solidify votes the former president would have received anyway.

“His supporters were enthusiastic, whether he was guilty or not,” Tasini argued. “This is [verdict] I help him with more than just fundraising.”

The nature of the New York case also needs to be considered: 34 felony counts of falsifying business records all revolve around $130,000 in hush money paid to adult actress Stormy Daniels to prevent her from publishing a story in the final days of the 2016 campaign that she had sex with Trump at a celebrity golf tournament a decade earlier.

The sensational allegations against Trump shouldn’t come as a surprise at this point, but that doesn’t mean voters want to be confronted with them again.

Democratic strategist Tad Devine said the nature of the case and the sentence “will permeate everyone’s conscience over time.”

Devine also argued that Trump’s outburst at a press conference on Friday was another example of the kind of behavior that is likely to antagonize voters.

“At a time when people are dealing with real issues in their lives, this guy is talking incessantly about himself and his grievances,” the strategist said.