(Trends Wide) — The evidence for the prosecution against Donald Trump for his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving office may seem “staggering.”
The case marks the first time a former president has been indicted in federal court and only the second time a former president has been indicted anywhere (after Trump himself earlier this year in New York County court).
What makes the charges even more ahistorical is that they come at a time when Trump is running for president. How will this new accusation influence the electoral campaign?
Let’s just say we should be, at least initially, skeptical that Trump is going to be penalized in the polls.
An ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted in early May asked whether Trump should face criminal charges for his alleged actions with the classified documents. Most Americans (54%) said he should. Only 38% said no.
At first glance, this may seem devastating for Trump. Keep in mind, however, that 50% of Americans indicated in an ABC News/Ipsos poll after his New York indictment regarding alleged hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Far fewer Americans (33%) said they shouldn’t have.
The divisions between “yes” and “no” to the two accusations are similar in the two polls.
However, Trump did not experience a poll penalty following his impeachment in New York. His polls for the general election against President Joe Biden remained tight. Biden was one point ahead of him in an average of national polls before the New York impeachment. Today, Biden is, on average, tied with Trump in national polls.
Opinions on whether Trump should face charges are clearly correlated with what people think of him in general. The national unfavorability rating for him hovers around 57%. His favorability rating is about 38%. This figure is pretty close to the 54%-38% split we saw in the ABC/Post poll on whether Trump should be impeached over the classified documents.
Indeed, outside of his inauguration in January 2017 and the early days of the covid-19 pandemic in the early spring of 2020, Trump has been consistently unpopular with the general electorate.
He only won in 2016 — and has remained competitive in the 2024 polls — because his opponents and potential opponents have also been unpopular.
One way that Trump could lose ground to Biden is if the Republicans start to desert him. Polls leading up to his indictment in federal court suggest we shouldn’t hold our breath for that to happen.
Only 17% of Republicans who participated in the ABC/Post poll believed Trump should be impeached for how he handled classified documents. The majority (75%) said it shouldn’t be.
Perhaps those percentages will start to change after Trump is indicted in Miami on Tuesday. But I am skeptical. The percentage of Republicans who thought he should be impeached in New York (14% on average) is terrifyingly similar to what we saw with the federal case.
Both figures are almost identical to the rating of unfavorability of Trump among Republicans nationally (18% on average).
Perhaps the bigger question is whether Trump induces the same “unite around the flag” effect within the Republican Party that he benefited from after being impeached in New York. Trump’s support among Republicans in national primary polls went from the mid-40s on average to the mid-50s, while his polling lead over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, seen by many as his main rival to the Republican Party, soared to more than 30 points.
Overcoming another big push from Trump in the primary polls would be a Herculean task for his Republican rivals.
However, there are some signs that Trump’s rally following the New York impeachment has stalled and even regressed a bit. The idea that he was always going to be far ahead in the Republican race runs counter to history.
Let’s remember that, at the beginning of the year, the former president was below 40 points in national polls, and was even behind in some state polls.
Trump may be defeated in a Republican primary. Whether another accusation is a way to reduce support for him among Republicans is another question.