Verdict at polls for Don
No hush-case hard knock in 3 swing states
Former President Donald Trump’s conviction last week in his Manhattan hush-money case has not significantly dented his standing against President Biden in three crucial states that could swing the outcome of the 2024 election, according to a new poll.
Trump, 77, leads Biden, 81, by two percentage points (47% to 45%) among likely voters in the incumbent’s birth state of Pennsylvania, according to the survey by the Florida Atlantic University and Public Opinion Research Lab (PolCom Lab) and Mainstreet Research.
Down to the margin
In Michigan, Biden leads Trump by a single percentage point among likely voters (47% to 46%), and in Wisconsin, Trump leads Biden by the same margin among the same group (41% to 40%).
The race in all three states is within the poll’s margin of error of plus-or-minus 3.5 percentage points.
Biden narrowly won all three states in 2020, four years after
Trump pulled off the same feat in his upset of Hillary Clinton.
In averages of polls collected by RealClearPolitics before the May 30 guilty verdict, Trump led Biden by 2.3 percentage points in Pennsylvania, 0.5 percentage points in Michigan and 0.1 percentage points in Wisconsin.
“Trump’s legal jeopardy may be rallying part of his base,” said Dr. Kevin Wagner, a professor of political science at FAU and a co-director of the Polcom Lab. “Most of his supporters don’t believe he’s guilty, while Biden voters overwhelmingly think he committed crimes.”
Wagner added that “18% of Republicans in our poll believe Trump is guilty. If they stay home, it could matter in November, especially in close states like these.”
Nearly half (49%) of respondents thought Trump was guilty in the New York case, with blacks (69%), Hispanics (59%) and white college-educated voters (50%) most likely to hold that view.
The poll surveyed 797 adults in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin May 30-31.