Trump polls shot upward after indictments started
Byron York
TRUMP POLLS SHOT UPWARD AFTER INDICTMENTS STARTED. Sometimes the poll numbers for former President Donald Trump look downright crazy. Over the weekend, Fox News released a new national survey that showed Trump leading the Republican presidential race with 69% support, as opposed to 12% for Ron DeSantis and 9% for Nikki Haley. It was amazing, but it wasn’t crazy. The Fox poll was in line with other polls showing Trump with sky-high national support.
Meanwhile, the Haley campaign is excited about a new CBS News poll showing the former South Carolina governor gaining on Trump in New Hampshire. The poll found Trump with 44% and Haley with 29% — a 15-point difference that qualifies as a horse race in this political season. More about that later.
One notable thing about Trump’s national lead, now 50.6 points over DeSantis in the RealClearPolitics average of polls, is that it appears to have been turbocharged by the indictments, federal and local, against the former president. Without the indictments, there is no telling where the GOP race would be today.
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Look at the last day the national race was close, or relatively close: March 27 of this year, when Trump led DeSantis in the RealClearPolitics average by 15 points, 44% to 29%. Just days later, Trump was indicted for the first time, by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and his poll numbers rose sharply. By April 20, just three weeks later, Trump had risen 10 points to 54%. In the same time, DeSantis fell 7 points, to 22%. Trump’s lead over DeSantis had more than doubled, courtesy of Bragg.
In the months that followed, Trump was indicted four more times, twice by special counsel Jack Smith, who was appointed by the Biden Justice Department, and once by Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Georgia. Through it all, Trump’s poll standing rose, from 44 points in late March to 54 points in late April to 58 points in September to 63 points today. Yes, his support has bumped up and down a little in that time, but Trump has not been below 50% support nationally since he first passed that mark on April 4 of this year.
What has happened can only be called an enormous backfire for those Democrats and Never Trumpers who thought indicting Trump would bring him down. As far as the Republican polls are concerned, it has done just the opposite. Now, some Democrats and Never Trumpers believe that convicting Trump, at least once, will bring him down. Maybe they’re right. But maybe they’re not.
There’s a lot going on here, but perhaps the most important thing is the very human phenomenon of people supporting their guy when he’s attacked. It’s tribal or it’s how teams work or whatever, but it’s entirely normal for people on a team to rally to the support of their leader when the leader is attacked by the other team. That’s just what happens.
Yes, there are other factors involved in Trump’s super-high poll numbers. For one, he is running as an incumbent president, which, of course, he is not, but nevertheless, a lot of Republicans appear to accept him as the incumbent in the race. He also has been president before, and many Republicans have a positive impression of his time in the White House. And Trump remains a unique performer on the campaign trail, a bigger personality than anyone pursuing him. Still, it appears to have been the indictments that were the booster rockets for Trump’s present standing in the Republican race.
One last note, about the New Hampshire poll. The CBS survey shows a big jump for Haley, who was at 11% in the last CBS poll in mid-September and is at 29% today. Her new rating is higher than other polls have found, but it appears to measure the visible progress she has been making lately, plus the influence of her endorsement by Gov. Chris Sununu (R-NH).
Of course, even if the CBS poll is spot on, Haley is still 15 points behind Trump. It is also fair to say that Trump has not paid a lot of attention to New Hampshire lately — he’s been stepping up his attention to Iowa in recent days — but that might be changing. This weekend, Trump made his first trip to New Hampshire in quite a while. If polls continue to show Haley closing on him, do not be surprised to see Trump heading north again soon.
For a deeper dive into many of the topics covered in the Daily Memo, please listen to my podcast, The Byron York Show — available on Radio America and the Ricochet Audio Network and everywhere else podcasts can be found.