Will the Trump Verdict Have Much Effect on the 2024 Election? New Poll Says No.

It's official, the verdict is in, and the deed is done; as RedState's own Susie Moore reported only moments ago, former President Donald John Trump has been found guilty of all counts by a Manhattan jury. The next few days will be filled with discussion of this result and what will happen next. As a certain character in a certain film franchise involving gene-engineered dinosaurs famously repeated: "Hold on to your butts."

Previously on RedState: BREAKING: Jury Returns Guilty Verdict Against Former President Donald Trump

One of the biggest questions is this: "How will this affect the 2024 election?" The nominations on both sides are effectively decided. Donald Trump has the delegates sewn up to win the nomination, he has been endorsed (tepidly, in a couple of cases) by his primary GOP primary election challengers. He's the candidate, guilty verdict or not. As it happens, a new poll released Thursday, prior to the verdict being decided, would appear to indicate that there won't be any significant effect:

A new national poll is the latest to indicate that regardless of whether former President Trump is found guilty or acquitted in his criminal trial, the verdict will not have a large impact on voters' perceptions in his 2024 election rematch with President Biden.
Two-thirds of registered voters nationwide questioned in a NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist National Poll released on Thursday said a guilty verdict in the trial would make no difference to their vote in the presidential election. Seventeen percent said a conviction of Trump would make them less likely to vote for him and 15% said they'd be more inclined to support the former president at the ballot box.
If Trump is acquitted, three-quarters of those surveyed said it wouldn't impact their vote. Fourteen percent said a not guilty verdict would make them more likely to back Trump, and 9% said they'd be less likely to vote for the former president.

To sum this up:

A guilty verdict - which, as we see, is the case - 67 percent of registered voters say it will make no impact, while 17 percent say they will be less likely to vote for Trump; fifteen percent say they will be more likely to vote for him. This is a statistical wash; although we should note that this poll was taken before the verdict, when all this was hypothetical. At the moment, though, the only indicator we have is that this verdict won't have much effect.

As for the impact of a not-guilty verdict - well, there's little point in discussing that now.

There are a few likely outcomes of all this that we can predict right away, though:

Joe Biden - or rather, his handlers - have the reason they need to pull out of any presidential debates now. Biden can swell up and pontificate that he's not going to debate a "convicted felon," and Democrats will line up to bark and clap like trained seals; this works to the Democrats' advantage, as any debate performance by the clearly-impaired president was bound to be a disaster.

Donald Trump (and this is a guess, but I think it's a pretty good one) will suffer some see-sawing in the polls for a few days, but will continue slowly gaining ground, as he has been doing in recent weeks.

If Donald Trump does win the election, which is perfectly possible as there is nothing in the Constitution prohibiting a convicted felon from running for or being elected president, the left will use this verdict as a reason to screech "Illegitimate President" for four years.

The Trump team, as Susie Moore pointed out in her breaking piece above, will almost certainly file a motion to set aside, followed by an appeal. What's not clear is if any of this will be resolved before the election.

This is the inflection point, as I said in a VIP piece I wrote on Thursday morning. This is where things get interesting. This is the moment where everything has changed.

Only minutes ago, the former President gave his brief and emphatic reply to the verdict:

We are in uncharted territory now, friends. It's anybody's guess what will happen next.