By Jason Lange
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Ten percent of Republican registered voters say they are less likely to vote for Donald Trump following his felony conviction for falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to a porn star, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Friday.
The two-day poll, conducted in the hours after the Republican presidential candidate’s conviction by a Manhattan jury on Thursday, also found that 56% of Republican registered voters said the case would have no effect on their vote and 35% said they were more likely to support Trump, who has claimed the charges against him are politically motivated and has vowed to appeal.
The potential loss of a tenth of his party’s voters is more significant for Trump than the stronger backing of more than a third of Republicans, since many of the latter would be likely to vote for him regardless of the conviction.
Among independent registered voters, 25% said Trump’s conviction made them less likely to support him in November, compared to 18% who said they were more likely and 56% who said the conviction would have no impact on their decision.
The verdict could shake up the race between Trump, who was U.S. president from 2017-2021, and Democratic President Joe Biden ahead of the Nov. 5 election. U.S. presidential elections are typically decided by thin margins in a handful of competitive swing states, meaning that even small numbers of voters defecting from their candidates can have a big impact.
Biden and Trump remain locked in a tight race, with 41% of voters saying they would vote for Biden if the election were held today and 39% saying they would pick Trump, according to the poll, which surveyed 2,556 U.S. adults nationwide.
Biden’s marginal lead was within the online poll’s roughly 2 percentage point margin of error for registered voters, in line with a Reuters/Ipsos poll from earlier in the month that showed Trump and Biden each with 40% support. In both polls, about one in five voters said they are undecided, leaning toward a third-party candidate or might not vote at all.
The election is still more than five months away, meaning much could change between now and Nov. 5, and some Republican strategists say they believe the news of Trump’s conviction will have little influence on voters’ thinking by then.
Trump is due to be sentenced on July 11, and the poll showed the electorate divided on whether he should go to prison for his crimes, with 53% of registered voters saying he should not be jailed over the hush money case and 46% saying he should serve time.
Incarceration would not prevent Trump from campaigning, or taking office if he were to win. His sentencing hearing will come just days before the Republican Party is due to formally nominate him as its presidential candidate at its convention in Milwaukee.
Voters are split on whether the hush money case against Trump was politically motivated, with 52% saying the prosecution was mainly about upholding the rule of law and 46% saying it was about trying to prevent Trump from returning to the White House.
Trump has been indicted in three other criminal cases but legal wrangling could keep those trials from occurring before the November election. Legal scholars consider the pending trials – which involve charges Trump engaged in electoral fraud and that he mishandled classified documents after leaving office – to be more serious than the hush money case. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him.
Some 60% of registered voters said it was important the three pending trials take place before the election, compared to 39% who said it was not important and 1% who didn’t answer the question.
