Indictments Haven't Hurt Trump's Polling-- Will They? Will Republicans Vote For Him If He's In Jail?

No one knows what’s going to happen this coming November— let alone in November, 2024. Still, there are hints and trends worth examining. On Friday, for example, Ed Kilgore saw a bright ray of blue sunlight behind the clouds… based on new data from Pew, from the 2022 midterms. The results confirmed conventional wisdom that “partisan differences in turnout— rather than vote switching between parties— account for most of the Republican gains in voting for the House last year… So while Democratic turnout may have exceeded expectations, it didn’t exceed Republican turnout. And voters who did turn out overwhelmingly stayed with their own party… Relatively small shares of voters defected from their partisan affiliation or 2020 presidential vote. Among those who voted for both president in 2020 and for a House representative in 2022, just 6% crossed party lines between elections or voted for third-party candidates in either election.”

[T]he midterm results and the Pew data on who voted and for whom should emphatically not be viewed in isolation from historic trends. There were two data points supporting the expectation that a “red wave” would form in November 2022. The first was the “midterm falloff” typically experienced by Democratic-leaning voter groups, particularly young and minority voters who have never participated in non-presidential elections in numbers matching the older and whiter voters who now lean Republican. The second is that traditional midterm voter backlash almost always afflicts the party that controls the White House. What the Pew analysis shows us is that the first phenomenon (a Democratic turnout falloff) indeed occurred, but the second (significant vote-switching away from Joe Biden’s party) largely didn’t. As so you had a small Republican ripple instead of a wave.

The other side of the “midterm falloff” coin is that turnout by pro-Democratic voting groups tends to improve in presidential elections. All else being equal, that means if Democrats can again hang onto their voters and they turn out at a higher rate, they should have an advantage in 2024. To put it another way, they should have lost significant ground between 2020 and 2022 but didn’t. The fact that Democrats didn’t do as well as they did in 2018, which the Times analysis emphasized, is extremely unsurprising: Republicans controlled the White House then, and Democrats did produce some vote-switching in their favor.

Before the presidential general election, we have primaries or at least the Republicans do. And first they have the Iowa caucuses… in 6 months. Jill Colvin and Steve Peoples reported that Republicans who don’t want to see Trump as their party’s nominee are worried that Iowa isn’t the solution… despite the indictments, the guilty verdict in the sex abuse case and despite the fact that about a third of Republicans view him unfavorably. He’s the frontrunner. The right-leaning Real Clear Politics national polling average as of Saturday morning shows him doing better than all the other candidates combined.

• Señor Trumpanzee- 53.0%

• Meatball Ron- 20.6%

• Pence- 6.3%

• Nikki Haley- 3.4%

• Tim Scott- 3.2%

• Ramaswarmy- 3.1%

• Chris Christie- 2.6%

Everyone else in under one percent. And the polling in Iowa isn’t much better for the not-Trump candidates.

• Señor Trumpanzee- 47.7%

• Meatball Ron- 23.7%

• Nikki Haley- 4.0%

• Tim Scott- 3.7%

• Pence- 3.3%

• Ramaswarmy- 2.3%

• Așa Hutchinson- 1.0%

“[A] growing sense of Trump’s inevitability,” they wrote, “is raising alarms among some Republicans desperate for the party to move on. Some described a sense of panic— or ‘DEFCON 1,’ as one put it— as they scramble to try to derail Trump and change the trajectory of the race. But there’s no clear plan or strategy on how to do that and Trump’s detractors aren’t rallying around a single alternative candidate yet. ‘They’re very concerned,’ former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said of fellow Republican leaders who share his view that renominating Trump would be a disaster for the party next November. ‘People [short for rich people] expected us to have made more progress than we have at this point.’ … But even critics acknowledge the outside events that many were counting on to dent Trump’s standing— namely his criminal indictments in New York and Florida— have not hurt him. In fact, the charges led some voters who were entertaining an alternative to return to Trump’s camp.”

So… the indictments have helped Trump and the fact that none of the alternatives are any good are problems… although, laughably, the media keeps pushing “Tim Scott has drawn growing attention.” Yeah, sure… persuade yourself. In his own state, where at least some people know who he is (since he’s a senator and they voted for him and he’s been in the media for years), Scott is polling respectably— 3rd place in the June poll from American Greatness:

• Señor Trumpanzee- 41%

• Meatball Ron- 18%

• Tim Scott- 10%

• Nikki Haley- 8%

• Pence- 3%

• Christie- 3%

• Ramaswarmy- 1%

• Hutchinson- 1%

This is the pathetic and ineffective ad Club For Growth has spent $3.6 million on to derail Trump. He’s not derailed. And the Koch network is financing anti-Trump mailers, phone banking and door knocking. So far none of their door knockers have been shot but they claim that “Trump’s support is softer than most assume and that even those who identify as Trump supporters are concerned about his electability in a general election and [are] open to an alternative.”

Frank Luntz, who has been running focus groups in Iowa, says this isn’t going to work and “warned such messaging ‘makes it more likely that Trump wins because it turns him into a victim. The moon and the stars will need to be aligned for Trump to be defeated,’ he said. ‘And it will be done by the candidate that supports the Trump agenda but opposes the lack of success.’… Asa Hutchinson, the former Arkansas governor who is among those challenging Trump for the nomination, said he still believes that Trump can be beaten. But he said two things have to change. ‘First, candidates like myself have to be very clear that Donald Trump is not the right direction for our country or our party,’ he said. Second: ‘The voters have to realize we can’t win in 2024 and it will be a devastating loss for the GOP... up and down the ballot if Donald Trump is our nominee. And that, I believe, will be understood by the voters as time goes [on].’”

Amy Walter (Cook Report) noted that neither Trump’s 2 indictments and the possibility of more coming down the pike, nor Meatball’s falling ratings, have done anything to dent Trump’s lead in the polls. But she offers some possibilities that could “shake things up” over the summer.

It’s hard to believe that voters who have stuck with Trump through all of his current legal troubles— including two indictments and a battery and defamation lawsuit— are going to suddenly abandon him if a Georgia grand jury indicts him later this summer for alleged voter interference in the 2020 election.

However, some Republican strategists I’ve spoken with argue that the weight of Trump’s legal troubles is taking an unseen toll. Republicans are rallying behind Trump because they see him being unfairly attacked. But, defending him is different from voting for him. Many of these GOP voters are weary of the chaos and the drama that engulfs the former president. And, every new indictment, court appearance or controversy reminds those voters that if they vote for Trump, this is exactly what they will get for another four years.

The first official Republican primary debate is scheduled for August 23. Trump has openly discussed skipping the debate, while DeSantis recently squashed rumors that he might forgo the debate as well, telling Fox News that he’d “be there regardless” of whatever Trump decides to do. At least four other candidates, Chris Christie, Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, and Sen. Tim Scott, all say they’ve reached the 40,000 individual donor threshold requirement to qualify for inclusion in the debate.

Trump has every reason to be a no-show. No front-running candidate wants to give their lower-polling challengers an opportunity to attack and/or embarrass them.

DeSantis’ situation, however, is a bit more complicated.

Without Trump on stage, DeSantis is the obvious target for the lower polling contenders. Everyone there wants to dethrone DeSantis from his second-place perch. Why give them the chance to do that?

At the same time, with his support slipping among voters, the donor class and even Rupert Murdoch, DeSantis needs to prove he deserves to be seen as the most likely successor to Trump. He has to prove that he can both take a punch, and throw them too.

It’s hard to understate the importance of these debates for DeSantis. His performance either solidifies his place as the top challenger to Trump, or it dethrones him and offers another candidate a chance to get into the coveted second place slot.

Is Iowa where DeSantis goes to die?