Guilty verdicts on all 34 felonies in former president Donald Trump’s criminal trial on hush money charges will likely have major negative implications for the presumptive GOP nominee’s bid for the presidency this fall, according to a local political scientist and pollster.
John Cluverius, UMass Lowell political science professor and director of research for the university’s Center for Public Opinion, expects the unprecedented criminal conviction will leave fence sitters or even those who marginally favor Trump less likely to head to the polls and vote for him.
Furthermore, the conviction against a major party candidate focuses attention on the campaign among the sizable slice of the American electorate, 14%, who have not been paying close attention, says Cluverius, drawing results from a UMass Lowell national poll in April.
Voters in this group, who were not paying close attention to the race, were more likely to favor Trump, he says. The verdict rings a bell, causing people to stand up and take notice, he says.
“This trial, because of its timing, is really pivotal for the narrative of the election,” he says.
While most voters have made up their minds about the ‘24 presidential race, there are still a lot of voters in play.
This historic verdict, a major news event, draws attention to a court case that was not televised and otherwise did not include made-for-TV testimony, dealing primarily in dry financial records and transfers, he said.
By drawing attention to the trial outcome, the verdict sullies, for some voters, the image Trump has long projected as the outsider, not beholden to Washington interests, as the drain-the-swamp candidate.
“A conviction makes him seem pretty swampy,” he added.
Prosecutors made the case that Trump had falsified records and hid reimbursements to lawyer Michael Cohen, who made payments to porn actor Stormy Daniels in the home stretch of the 2016 campaign.
The prosecutors successfully argued that these actions were taken to silence Daniels from talking about a sexual encounter she and Trump had years earlier.
Another item to consider, says Cluverius, whose expertise includes gauging public opinion, is how the verdict may bring more pressure to resolve the numerous other court cases involving Trump.
“Most Americans think if you are found guilty of one thing, you are likely guilty of other things,” he noted.
Meanwhile, a Northern Essex Community College history professor who has studied and written books about American presidents and elections, says the felony convictions won’t sway the sizeable Trump base of supporters but will influence the undecided.
“Anybody truly sitting on the fence would likely walk away from him,” said history professor and author Richard Padova.
Massachusetts would have voted Blue and supported the incumbent, President Joe Biden, even if Trump had been found not guilty of the charges, Padova says.
But in New Hampshire, the Trump conviction makes a difference, and will likely result in the state giving its two electoral college votes to Biden.
Padova says there is no precedence for the Trump convictions.
“This is by far the most serious thing a sitting or a former president has gone through,” he said.
President Richard Nixon was facing allegations of obstruction of justice but resigned the presidency and was subsequently pardoned by incoming President Gerald Ford.
A presidential candidate, Eugene Debs of the Socialist Party, in 1920 made his fifth and last run for president, campaigning by press releases, while he was in federal prison for sedition, receiving 914,191 votes (3.4 percent), Padova said.
Padova expects that even with the conviction, Trump will probably get a sizable amount of the vote, which makes the race interesting.
“It makes it all the more intriguing,” Padova says.