Political opinion polls show that the presidential race is very close. The Reuters/Ipsos poll out today has Donald Trump ahead of Joe Biden 38-36 with 26% undecided.
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But the poll also carries troubling news for Trump. If he’s convicted of a felony, 31% of Republicans wouldn’t vote for him in November 2024.
That’s an improvement over the 52% of Republicans who said in August that they wouldn’t vote for Trump if he was convicted. Or is it? The whole hypothetical question of whether Trump will lose support among Republicans if he’s convicted is loaded. And the fact that the pollster got two entirely different responses shows the idiocy of asking it.
The real question is what voters think of the trials being conducted trying to convict Trump of a variety of crimes. Only 25% of Republican voters believe the charges against Trump, while most believe them to be politically motivated.
If that’s the case, how is it that 31% of Republicans won’t vote for Trump if he’s convicted on supposedly bogus charges?
Trump will receive 90-93% of the Republican vote as he did in 2016 and 2020 whether he is convicted or not.
Biden has another challenge, and the Reuters poll shows how serious it could be. Robert F. Kennedy may be a political gadfly but the Kennedy name still resonates with many in America, and RFK’s constant advocacy against most vaccines has kept his name in front of the voters.
The poll showed that Kennedy, part of the storied political family, could draw more support from Biden than Trump.
Trump’s lead widened to a 5-point advantage nationally when respondents were given an option to vote for Kennedy.
Some 16% of respondents picked Kennedy when given the option, while Trump had 36% support, compared to 31% for Biden. Trump also led Biden by five points in the seven swing states when Kennedy was as option.
Kennedy, whose uncle John F. Kennedy served as president and whose father, Robert, was a senator and attorney general, faces a challenge to amass enough signatures to get on the ballot on all 50 states. Last week, a super PAC fundraising committee backing Kennedy’s bid said it would spend up to $15 million to get Kennedy on the ballot in 10 states as a starting measure.
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Conventional wisdom suggests any third-party candidate, no matter how much support they have in the months leading up to the election, will eventually fall back and garner 4-6% of the vote. If the election is close, that 4-6% would come disproportionately from Biden’s side and could cost him the election.
But once again, there may be a hidden wellspring of support for Trump as there was in 2016. It’s even more unpopular to say you’re for Trump in 2024 than it was then or in 2020. People telling pollsters one thing and meaning another has become commonplace, and pollsters have yet to figure out how to factor in voters’ deceit when tabulating their data.