Did Trump’s guilty conviction hurt his polling numbers?

(NEXSTAR) — It has been nearly three weeks since former President Donald Trump was found guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal alleged affairs during the 2016 campaign. The jury’s decision was the most striking legal blow to Trump, who now stands as the only U.S. president in history to be criminally convicted.

But did Trump’s conviction impact his standings in the polls at all?

We still have a few months before we can say for sure, of course, but polling numbers show it’s seemingly unlikely.

Polling in the days leading up to his conviction shows Trump edging out President Joe Biden, though they were relatively close across the board.

A YouGov/The Economist poll of roughly 1,500 registered voters released on May 28, two days before Trump’s conviction, gave the former president a 1-point lead over Biden. Trump held a 2-point lead over Biden in a poll of 10,000 registered voters released by the Morning Consult that same day.

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The next day, a Morning Consult/Politico poll of nearly 4,000 registered voters had Biden and Trump tied. Biden had a 7-point lead over Trump in a poll by Emerson College Polling, The Hill, and Nexstar’s WPIX of 1,000 New York voters. When long-shot candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Jill Stein, and Cornel West were factored in, Biden maintained a 44% to 38% lead over Trump.

Another poll of 801 likely Ohio voters by National Public Affairs showed Trump leading by 8 points, with and without long-shot candidates.

In the days and weeks after Trump’s historic conviction, polling shows the race has remained relatively close.

While a New York Times/Siena College recontact poll conducted June 1-3 showed Trump’s lead dip slightly in six battleground states after his conviction, various others put him in the lead.

A poll conducted immediately after the conviction gave Trump a 5-point lead in Georgia. He held the same lead among North Carolina residents surveyed a few days later.

Pollsters said a survey of registered voters nationwide, published June 6, showed Trump’s support held steady at 46%, but his lead over Biden dropped from 3 points to 1 point.

An Iowa poll of over 800 residents conducted last week put Trump ahead by nearly 20 points. (Former President Barack Obama won that state, twice.) Trump also holds the lead in Florida, though that is narrowing, polling shows.

Trump also received some early signs of support in the 24 hours after the verdict was reached: Eric Trump told Fox News his father’s campaign had raised $52.8 million.

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Biden appears to have held strong in some states, however.

Among likely voters in Minnesota — which hasn’t voted for a Republican presidential candidate since President Richard Nixon in 1972 — Biden held a 4-point lead over Trump, according to a survey conducted June 3-5.

A poll published Sunday showed a majority of Black voters in Pennsylvania and Michigan said they would vote for Biden in a hypothetical match-up.

In a CBS poll conducted June 5 and 7, more than half of respondents who expressed support for Biden said they were mainly backing him to oppose Trump, The Hill previously reported. That same poll put Biden and Trump neck and neck, nationally and in battleground states.

A Fox News survey from June 1-3 also kept Biden and Trump tied in Virginia, though the same survey put Trump ahead in Nevada and Arizona. (Trump holds a 7-point lead over Biden in Arizona, according to a poll published last week.) Biden and Trump were also close in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, according to a poll released on June 4.

Some of those same polls also showed voters agreed with the guilty verdict in Trump’s hush money case.

The Georgia polling showed half of the voters surveyed approved of the guilty conviction. In the North Carolina poll mentioned above, 29% of respondents said Trump’s guilty verdict made them less likely to vote for him this year (though 37% said the verdict had no impact on their vote).

Almost 1 in 5 Republicans in three battleground states said in a survey released on June 4 that they believed Trump was guilty in the hush money trial. Half of those surveyed in an ABC News/Ipsos poll said they believed Trump should end his campaign after his guilty verdict, and about half in an Associated Press/NORC survey said they approve of Trump’s conviction.

Over 20% of independents in a Politico/Ipsos poll published Monday said they are less likely to vote for the former president due to his conviction.

Still, an election forecast model launched last week gave Trump a 2 in 3 chance of winning the general election in November.

Overall, the polling tracked by The Hill/Decision Desk HQ shows Trump’s lead has, on average, held steady over Biden since his conviction.

As of June 17, The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s polling gives Trump a narrow 0.9% lead over Biden when put against each other in a hypothetical matchup. When Kennedy is added in, Trump’s lead jumps to 1.6%.

Still, Democrats appear hopeful Trump’s conviction will only bolster their odds of winning.

“I think the prevailing view is it is an extremely close election and the conviction, while not a game changer, helps on the margins with a small group of voters,” Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic lobbyist and donor, told The Hill a week after Trump’s conviction. “It may temporarily juice enthusiasm on Trump side but doesn’t gain any new voters for him.”

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