Trump’s conviction may be hurting him — but it’s early

“two other polls found that the verdict has made a small but significant share of potential Trump supporters less likely to vote for him. According to Ipsos/Reuters, 10 percent of Republican registered voters said they were less likely to support Trump after the conviction; HarrisX/Forbes put that number at 11 percent. Similarly, 25 percent of independents said they were less likely to vote for Trump in the Ipsos/Reuters poll, and 28 percent of independents said so in the HarrisX/Forbes poll.”

“you should take more-or-less-likely polls with a grain of salt; some of those people who say they are less likely to vote for Trump may not have been very likely to vote for him in the first place, and even among supporters, “less likely to vote for” does not mean “definitely will not vote for.””  

“On average, the most recent national polls from the four pollsters who’ve polled since the verdict show a tied race.* That represents a 1-point average swing toward Biden from those pollsters’ pre-conviction surveys.”  

“Interestingly, at least according to these surveys, the shift toward Biden isn’t because Trump is losing support; it’s because Biden is gaining it. On average, Biden’s support went from 42 percent in these four pollsters’ pre-conviction polls to 43 percent after it. By contrast, Trump’s support stayed flat at 43 percent.”

“Although the fact that three out of the four pollsters showed a shift toward Biden makes us more confident that this is, in fact, real movement, the shifts in both the Ipsos/Reuters and Morning Consult polls were within the margin of error — meaning they could have just been due to random chance. That said, Echelon Insights did something useful: It surveyed the same voters both before and after the conviction, removing the possibility that its 2-point shift toward Biden was due to getting a slightly more Democratic sample the second time around.

It’s also possible that these shifts are an illusion caused by something called (deep breath) differential partisan nonresponse bias. Basically, in the wake of bad news for Republicans and/or good news for Democrats, Republicans may be less excited about responding to surveys and Democrats may be more excited to — which can lead to polling numbers that are a bit better for Democrats than the true state of public opinion.”

“Even if Biden’s improvement is real, though, another thing to bear in mind is that these are just four polls.”

https://abcnews.go.com/538/trumps-conviction-hurting-early/story?id=110790504

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