New Polls Show Potential for a Sane Majority
The Republican rejection of the rule of law may be disqualifying. And then there’s the increasing GOP creepiness.
JUST A FEW DAYS AGO, we were being told that twelve anonymous New Yorkers and Justice Juan Merchan had elected Donald Trump. That Americans everywhere will vote for him solely on the basis of a guilty verdict. That folks who had been on the fence about Trump, and even critical of him, were going to be so outraged that they would decisively back him.
The supposed injustice of the case and the verdict, you see, would prove disqualifying for Biden so that Trump will shine in comparison. Apparently, having his first felony conviction under his belt renders Trump more commander-in-chief-worthy than ever.
The unanimous guilty judgments on 34 felony counts prompted a Republican Day of Rage that has yet to end, with even U.S. senators making clear it will last throughout the entire campaign. Rather than trying to move past their nominee’s criminal conviction—and return to winning policy issues like high inflation or the border crisis—the GOP is melting down.
In their zeal to martyr Trump, Republicans have dismissed the notion that the center of the electorate may have a limit. Trump and his party are behaving as if they already have won the power that swing voters will have to give them on November 5.
Naturally Trump is talking up revenge and how it can be “justified.” And he’s all but begging to be jailed, as incarceration would break fundraising records, even though—he threatened—it would bring the public to the “breaking point.”
From trashing the jury and the judge to blaming the executive branch for convicting Trump in New York—a blatant lie—Republicans are displaying contempt for the rule of law.
The speaker of the House of Representatives insinuated that friends he has spoken with on the U.S. Supreme Court could reverse it. “I think that the justices on the court—I know many of them personally—I think they are deeply concerned about that, as we are. So I think they’ll set this straight,” Johnson said.
Then there was the reaction from vice presidential hopeful Sen. Marco Rubio. The day after the verdict he tweeted that it was time to fight fire with fire because “Our current President is a demented man propped up by wicked & deranged people willing to destroy our country to remain in power.”
Rubio is one of the GOP senators who signed Sen. Mike Lee’s letter calling for a blockade of all legislative priorities and nominations of the Democratic majority in the Senate because a jury in New York convicted Trump.
YET AS REPUBLICANS’ BRAINS BREAK, it appears voters may have reached a breaking point with Trump. Multiple polls conducted since Trump’s guilty verdict show that more voters think the jury issued a correct verdict than not. Majorities and pluralities in the surveys show voters believe Trump committed a crime, intentionally did something wrong, and was not treated more harshly than other defendants by the justice system. A hefty majority of respondents in a new Yahoo/YouGov poll—64 percent—said it is now important that “voters get a verdict in Trump’s trials before the 2024 general election.” The number of Americans who think Trump “conspired to overturn the results of a presidential election” has increased 5 points since January and the number who believe him guilty of removing classified documents from the White House and “obstructing efforts to retrieve them” has risen by 4 points in the same period.
And several post-verdict surveys also show Biden making gains.
The Yahoo News/YouGov poll showed Biden leading Trump nationally for the first time since October 2023. A New York Times/Siena poll recontacted respondents polled in April and May and found that Biden had gained 2 percent with a critical group: “The shift was especially pronounced among the young, nonwhite and disengaged Democratic-leaning voters who have propelled Mr. Trump to a lead in the early polls,” the Times wrote, with around one-quarter of those voters now choosing Biden instead. The survey found that “double-haters,” who don’t want to vote for either candidate were “especially likely” to abandon Trump. The Times noted that another poll of recontacted voters by Echelon Insights, a GOP firm, also found a 2-point shift to Biden.
The Bulwark’s Sarah Longwell has also found this response among her focus groups of two-time Trump voters, following the verdict.
The difference is small, but the evidence that has emerged so far shows a segment of persuadable, non-tribal voters that believes a criminal conviction speaks to a person’s fitness for the highest office.
And their votes could be decisive.
OVERT EFFORTS BY TRUMP AND REPUBLICANS to delegitimize the justice system are not popular outside of MAGA with normal people who fly their American flags right-side up. As Republicans become increasingly radicalized by Trump’s retribution campaign they risk alienating independent voters. And after the conviction, these voters are more likely to be paying far more attention to the campaign.
Should the U.S. Supreme Court, before it goes on recess for the summer, place a president above some laws in their ruling on Trump’s immunity request, these same Americans may see that as out of bounds.
These swing voters are likely to notice the criminal trials Trump’s allies are facing in swing states over attempts to steal the 2020 election, even though he will not be held to account for the same before Election Day.
Voters who have decided a felony conviction is disqualifying will also be more likely to notice as Trump and the GOP’s brazenness and recklessness escalate through the campaign.
Trump’s lies have become more deranged since the verdict. Not only did he claim last week that he never said “Lock her up,” about Hillary Clinton in 2016, which we all heard repeatedly and can instantly find video of on our phones, but this weekend he claimed that it was he and not Biden who capped insulin at $35 per month “for millions of Americans,” which every insulin user in the country knows is a lie.
As the eightieth anniversary of D-Day was set to begin last week, 46 Republicans in the House voted against NATO funding and all but two Republicans in the Senate GOP voted against protecting access to birth control.
At the behest of Trump, Speaker Johnson just named a 2020 coup plotter and an unstable partisan to serve on the House Intelligence Committee—endangering our national security, blindsiding the committee’s chairman and infuriating his own members.
And in a grim and shameful display of disdain for the rule of law and law enforcement, several Republicans in the Pennsylvania state legislature walked out, booed, turned their backs on, and hissed at two U.S. Capitol police officers attacked by rioters on January 6th as they were honored in the chamber last week.
These sorts of incidents and actions and distortions may be Grade A MAGA-meat. But none of them are appealing to swing voters, whom Republicans are increasingly acting like they don’t need.
There are many reasons why Trump can win re-election in November. Yet there is evidence that a majority of Americans could reject Trump’s attack on the rule of law and defeat him.
He and his complicit Republicans are asking for it.