Mellman: Will convictions hurt Trump?  

Some dear friends and valued colleagues recently took to the op-ed page of the New York Times to argue that Donald Trump could well become an electoral fatality if he is convicted of the crimes of which he now stands accused.  

“If he is criminally convicted by a jury of his peers, voters say they are likely to punish him for it,” the group wrote. 

Don’t bet on it. As much as I’d like to believe it, there’s ample reason for doubt. 

Such conclusions reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of both polling and of the human psyche. One need only look back to President Bill Clinton’s highly partisan and wholly undeserved impeachment to see exactly how both survey research and human brains operate in such circumstances. 

In late January 1998, Washington Post pollsters posed the following question to a carefully constructed, random sample of Americans: “If Clinton lied by testifying under oath last January that he did not have an affair with Lewinsky, and he did not resign, is this something for which Clinton should be impeached, or not?” 

A 55 percent majority said that, in that case, yes he should be impeached, with 40 percent responding that the president should not be impeached. 

Months later, a 76 percent majority were convinced the president had lied, but only 30 percent favored impeaching him while 66 percent rejected impeachment. 

So Americans claimed they would support impeaching Clinton if he had lied about his relationship. However, when it was clear that he had, they in fact overwhelmingly opposed impeachment.  

Similarly, when the Post poll asked whether Clinton should resign if the House voted to impeach him, or fight the charges in the Senate, only 38 percent said they wanted him to battle the charges, whereas 58 percent preferred he resign. 

Did the electorate hold onto that view after Clinton was impeached by the House? Of course not. In fact, the numbers almost inveted. Fifty-six percent said he should fight the charges with only 33 percent preferring resignation.  

Here is a comparison that is perhaps more on point. In the wake of the 2020 election, many Republicans accepted Donald Trump’s assertion that the election was stolen. Many of those same voters also told us that they would revise their view if the courts ruled against Trump.  

In fact, however, even after Trump lost some 60 cases, their minds remained largely unchanged. 

Beliefs are persistent, stubborn things. People fancy themselves open to new information and diverse perspectives, and sometimes we are. But mostly, we go on holding fast to our preexisting views.  

Moreover, as I’ve argued before, people are just not very good at projecting their holiday spending or forecasting their reaction to political news. Human beings are not goot at transporting themselves to a parallel universe and correctly predicting their own reactions in that alternate reality.

Of course, Trump’s situation is quite different from Clinton’s because the charges against him are a lot more serious. Trump is facing criminal charges stemming from his effort to overturn the expressed will of the people and trample on our democracy. 

And there are certainly examples of presidents being deeply damaged by scandal. Richard Nixon’s approval rating plummeted from 67 percent to 31 percent between January and August 1973 as Watergate dominated the headlines. When he resigned a year later, only 24 percent approved of his performance.  

It is certainly possible that Trump could endure a similar fate as a result of criminal convictions, but history and an understanding of the mind’s workings give us no reason to assume it will, nor to accept at face value poll results trumpeting such predictions.  

Trump’s current supporters are only slightly more likely to abandon him if he is convicted than the authors of the New York Times op-ed are to support him if he is acquitted.

Mellman is president of The Mellman Group and has helped elect 30 U.S. senators, 12 governors and dozens of House members. Mellman served as pollster to Senate Democratic leaders for over 20 years, as president of the American Association of Political Consultants, a member of the Association’s Hall of Fame, and is president of Democratic Majority for Israel.