How much will Donald Trump’s conviction in the New York hush money case matter come November?
The obvious answer is that nobody knows. Still, I suspect the verdict will matter, just not in ways that are easy or even possible to predict.
A lot of the instant reaction revolves around polls. We talk about polls not because they are so important but because we lack much else to go on. Like the proverbial drunk who looks under the streetlamp for his lost keys because the light is much better there, we look at polls because they at least illuminate something, even if it’s not very much.
The smattering of surveys conducted since Thursday’s verdict show that slightly more than half of Americans think the jury was correct. A CBS poll found that the verdict changed very few minds, though a small number had more negative views of Trump. None of that is surprising given that attitudes about the trial have tracked attitudes about Trump.
If the opinions indicated by the latest polling hold constant for the roughly 150 days to Nov. 5, one could plausibly argue that the verdict will cost Trump the election. The consensus among experts across the partisan spectrum is that this election will be decided by a tiny number of votes in a handful of states, so movement of even a couple of percentage points away from Trump could be decisive.