Polls show Trump may still have edge over Biden even if convicted of a felony

16 December 2023

Despite being the first ex-president to be indicted on criminal charges, former President Donald Trump may still prevail in the 2024 presidential election if current polling trends hold — even if convicted of a felony.

Politico recently reported that in a recent spate of presidential election polls, the number of Republican voters who say they would vote for President Joe Biden or someone else if Trump is convicted of a felony is consistently dwindling. In a December Wall Street Journal poll, respondents went for Trump over Biden by a 47-43 margin. However, when survey-takers were asked how they would vote if Trump was convicted of federal felony charges in either the election interference case or the classified documents case prior to next November, 45% of those polled still said Trump would have their support in the general election, with 46% going for Biden.

"With just a 1-point lead in a hypothetical Trump conviction scenario, Democrats can’t rely on a small post-conviction swing tipping the race," Politico's Steven Shepard wrote.

POLL: Should Trump be allowed to hold office again?

Other polls show similar sentiment among likely voters. In a November New York Times/Siena College poll of voters in six key swing states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin), voters remained virtually locked in for their favored candidates. When the Times asked both Trump supporters and undecided voters how they would cast their ballots if the former president "were convicted and sentenced to prison but were still the Republican nominee," only 5% of likely voters said they would choose Biden. And a ulk of that 5% weren't Trump supporters, but voters who were either undecided or backing other candidates, like independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Green Party candidate Dr. Cornel West.

"That’s potentially enough to tilt the race to the Democratic incumbent — but it’s not guaranteed, especially with Biden already trailing," Shepard wrote.

Perhaps the most revealing poll of how Republicans would vote in a Trump conviction scenario is a December poll of Tennessee voters from Vanderbilt University and SSRS. The poll, which gathered a roughly representative sample of the Volunteer State given its reputation as a GOP stronghold (respondents were 53% Republican-leaning, 34% Democrat-leaning, 13% identifying with neither party) asked voters aged 18 and up how they would vote in 2024. Trump was the clear winner, leading by 19 points in a hypothetical three-way contest with Biden and RFK Jr. That lead was still 13 points when respondents were asked how they would vote if Trump "had been convicted of one or more felonies by a jury."

Biden's tepid performance in polls has been a consistent thorn in his side so far in his bid for a second term in the White House. Polling data from RealClearPolitics shows that on December 16, 2011, when former President Barack Obama was running for a second term, he still enjoyed a slim 1.6% advantage over Republican rival Mitt Romney on average. Comparatively, Biden is trailing Trump by roughly three points in the lates national polling averages.

Read Politico's report by clicking here.

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