The charges against Trump didn’t sink his campaign, but a conviction did
For Donald J. Trump, a new set of New York Times/Siena College polls paints a stunning, seemingly contradictory picture.
His 91 felony charges in four different jurisdictions have not significantly damaged him among voters in battleground states. Still, he remains weaker than at least one of his Republican rivals, and if he is convicted in any of his cases, some voters appear ready to turn against him — to the point where he could lose the 2024 election.
Mr. Trump leads President Biden in five key battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania, according to Times/Siena polling. He has benefited significantly from Biden’s advantages among younger, Black and Hispanic voters, many of whom still have a positive view of the policies Trump has implemented as president. And Mr. Trump appears to have room to grow, as more voters say they are open to supporting the former president than to supporting Mr. Biden, with a large share of voters saying they would like to support Mr. Trump confidence in the areas of the economy and national security.
But the results reveal the complex way voters continue to view Trump, his presidency and his legal troubles.
The polls showed Trump largely politically surviving the criminal charges against him before voting begins in the Republican Party primaries. He leads Mr. Biden by between 4 and 10 percentage points in five of the six battleground states surveyed. In a sixth state, Wisconsin, Biden had a narrow lead. A majority of voters say Trump’s policies have helped them personally. About the same percentage of voters say they are hurt by Mr. Biden’s policies.
The former president’s showing in these head-to-head polls appears to stem equally from Mr. Biden’s vulnerabilities, Mr. Trump’s strength and the electorate’s sour mood and pessimism about the economy. The surveys underscore the fact that in close elections, such as in the past two presidential elections and as expected in 2024, even marginal changes in voting patterns can be enough to sway a state toward a candidate.
The core of Mr. Trump’s strength remains his perceived skill at managing the economy — at least as far as he is compared to Mr. Biden. More than half of voters say the economy is in bad shape, despite a multimillion-dollar push by Biden allies to advance his efforts to rebuild the country after the pandemic. While voters see the country heading in the wrong direction, Trump appears to benefit from being out of the White House, out of the spotlight and without accountability when things go badly.
Voters trust Trump more than Biden to manage the economy by a margin of 22 percentage points. On the economy, Trump enjoys greater confidence across all age groups, among white and Hispanic voters and across the education spectrum. In most of these states, the share of voters who say they vote based on the economy — as opposed to social issues — has increased since last November’s midterm elections.
“Jobs fell because Biden didn’t know how to handle the pandemic,” said Monica Fermin, 51, of Allentown, Pennsylvania. “Trump didn’t know it at first, but Biden was even worse.”
Ms. Fermin, who emigrated from the Dominican Republic as a teenager, worried that Mr. Biden’s immigration policies have put additional pressure on the country. She voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 over concerns about Mr. Trump’s temperament, but this time her concerns are largely focused on Mr. Biden. “Biden is too old and doesn’t have the mental capacity for it,” she said. ‘We need someone stronger. I think Trump can get results this time.”
However, Trump is still in a weaker position than such gains make it seem.
If the former president is convicted – as many of his allies expect him to participate in the January 6 related trial to be held in Washington DC next year – about 6 percent of voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin says they would transfer their vote to Mr. Biden. That would potentially be enough to decide the election.
Kurt Wallach, 62, a registered Republican from Maricopa County in Arizona, said he voted for Mr. Trump in 2020 and thought the former president had generally performed well in office, aside from the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. But now, given the ongoing criminal cases, his views have changed.
“If he is convicted, I would say, fine, get him out of the race, let’s find another Republican,” Mr. Wallach said. “If he is not convicted, I would probably vote for Trump.”
Dakota Jordan, a 26-year-old also from Maricopa County, did not vote in the 2020 election. He said he would prefer not to have Mr. Trump in office at all, but that “given the choices” he would vote for him over Mr. Biden, in the absence of a criminal conviction. “If he were to be convicted, there is absolutely no question: I cannot choose a criminal as my leader,” he said.
Indeed, Mr. Trump remains broadly unpopular.
A majority of voters in the swing state have a negative view of him. And the Times/Siena polls show that another Republican candidate, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, would outperform Trump by three percentage points over Biden in these six states. In a matchup in which Biden faces a generic Republican candidate, the Republican candidate wins by 16 percentage points.
Mr. Trump is performing better against Mr. Biden than his main rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who has tried to anchor his campaign against Mr. Trump on the idea that the former president who lost the 2020 election cannot possibly win another to win. These polls significantly hamper Mr. DeSantis’ arguments about electability.
Even in a weaker position than some of his rivals, Trump has assembled a surprisingly diverse coalition for a Republican.
Among voters under 30 – typically a key Democratic Party constituency – Trump trails Biden by just one percentage point. Such a result would seem unlikely if it were not consistent with the trends seen in many public and private polls. In 2020, Mr. Biden won that age group by 33 percent in these states.
Younger voters say they trust Mr. Trump over Mr. Biden on national security and the economy — saying the latter is crucial to their vote by a two-to-one margin on social issues like abortion and democracy.
“How Biden has handled the conflict in the Middle East is by far the biggest factor for me,” said Hamza Rahman, 21, of Warren, Michigan, who said he was concerned about America’s involvement in several global conflicts and relied on social media. sites like TikTok to help understand what’s really happening on the ground.
Mr Rahman, who voted for Mr Biden in 2020, is considering Mr Trump this time but said he struggled with the choice. “I’m so frustrated with Biden, but Trump isn’t great either,” he said. “It’s like plucking from a sword or a dagger.”
Trump’s gains among voters of color — especially voters without a college degree, and especially men — have been pronounced and follow recent trends. These polls show that the more diverse a battleground state is, the better Mr. Trump performs against Mr. Biden. Mr. Trump leads Mr. Biden by 10 percentage points in Nevada, six in Georgia and five in Arizona — all saying Mr. Biden won in 2020 with a coalition made up of suburban voters and voters of color.
Trump’s 22 percent support among African Americans is both a modern first for a Republican and a significant improvement over the 8 percent he had in the same states in 2020 Times/Siena polls.
“I like what Trump is for,” said John Royster, 55, a truck driver from Atlanta who is Black and voted for Mr. Biden in 2020. “Sometimes he tells untruths, but he says what is on his mind – I can appreciate that.”
Mr. Trump has come a particularly long way among Hispanic voters.
He started his 2016 campaign by declaring that Mexico was sending rapists and criminals across the border, and in that election he won the support of 28 percent of Hispanics nationally, according to Pew Research Center. According to Pew, Trump’s support among Hispanics rose to 36 percent in 2020 in his battle with Biden.
Trump now has the support of 42 percent of Hispanic swing-state voters. And he is doing better among Hispanic voters than his two biggest rivals, Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis. Trump’s team is trying to build on these gains by booking an interview with Univision to air this week, targeting immigrants from Latin America — especially in parts of Florida — who are hostile to anything is labeled as ‘socialism’.
For many Hispanic voters, the state of the economy has played a major role in their choice of candidate. Hispanic voters are three times more likely to say economic issues are important in determining their vote than social issues, and 20 points more likely to trust Mr. Trump than Mr. Biden to tackle the economy.
Elaine Ramirez, 38, a Democrat from Las Vegas, said Biden promised to help the economy and lower inflation — promises he said he has not kept.
“I think for me it’s all of Biden’s broken promises that make me want to switch to Trump,” said Ms. Ramirez, who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 and is considering voting for Mr. Trump. “In 2020, I didn’t like what Trump had to say and his womanizing wasn’t great. But Trump is also more dominant and aggressive and perhaps we need such a person to restore our economy and our country.”
The New York Times/Siena College polls of 3,662 registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were conducted by telephone using live operators from October 22 to November 3, 2023. When all states are combined, the margin of sampling error is plus or minus 1.8 percentage points. The margin of sampling error for each state is between 4.4 and 4.8 percentage points. Crosstabs and methodology are available here.
Alyce McFadden contributed reporting.