Polls prove: Even ‘Teflon Don’ can’t brush off ‘convicted felon’  

When Donald Trump famously claimed in 2016 that he could “shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters,” he probably never worried about testing the truth of that scenario. Now the disgraced former president is dragging the weight of 34 felony convictions behind him, and it’s clear he isn’t as immune from political consequences as he once boasted. 

A slew of new polls have come out in the two weeks since a New York jury declared Trump guilty of falsifying business documents, and none of them are good news for the MAGA faithful. From his cratering popularity with independent voters to weakness in key swing states, the Trump campaign is wrestling with the tough reality that normal people just aren’t interested in being represented by a convicted criminal. 

With a tough debate in just nine days and the possibility of jail time looming next month, Trump is facing the first of several crucial moments in his 2024 campaign. As expected, he’s handling them all like a guy without a strategy. That’s a huge blessing for Joe Biden. 

Trumpworld is still reeling from brutal Morning Consult and Yahoo! News polls, both conducted in the days after Trump’s criminal conviction. Those polls are the first in weeks to show President Biden ahead among likely voters, and they also reveal a Trump campaign plummeting in popularity with the independent and Republican-leaning voters he’ll need to convince in order to walk back into the White House.  

Morning Consult’s numbers should be a wake-up call for a Republican Party in thrall to Trump, because 8 percent of voters who supported Trump in 2020 are either backing Biden or supporting another candidate. That may seem like a small margin, but Trump doesn’t have the votes to spare if he wants to pick up swing states likely to be decided by razor-thin vote differences.  

The findings aren’t any better in the Yahoo! News Poll, which found that a majority of Americans agree Trump committed serious felonies in New York. That includes nearly 10 percent of Republican voters, many of whom have already said they can’t morally justify casting a ballot for a convicted felon. That mirrors the findings in yet another poll, this one by Reuters/Ipsos, which found that Trump’s conviction made GOP voters less likely to support him. 

If Trump can’t even count on his party base, he really won’t want to see how bad the numbers get when independent voters enter the conversation. A Politico/Ipsos poll released on Monday found that one in five independents were less likely to vote for Trump after his conviction. If those numbers are even close to correct, he can forget about picking up the swing states he needs to win.  

We’re already seeing that snowball effect in action. Biden now leads Trump in Michigan, where he was recently trailing by nearly 4 points, as well as in Wisconsin, where Biden regained a narrow lead. Wisconsin may be the best example of how Trump’s post-conviction weakness could doom his presidential hopes: in 2016, Trump won the state by less than 1 percent. If disgusted Republicans and alienated independents continue to keep their distance, there’s no mathematical way for Trump to bring the Badger State back into his column.  

For his part, Biden is keen to ensure Trump stays firmly lashed to his legal woes. Expect the words “convicted felon” to feature prominently in next week’s CNN presidential debate, where Trump will almost certainly face pointed questions about his growing list of convictions. There’s also the unprecedented possibility that Trump is actually in prison on the day Republicans formally nominate him for president — a situation real enough that senior party leaders are making contingency plans for Trump to accept the nomination from behind bars. The party of “law and order,” indeed. 

If that isn’t enough, the Biden campaign is also unleashing a massive $50 million ad buy dedicated to reminding voters of Trump’s numerous legal problems, from his sexual assault judgment to his $83 million defamation verdict to, yes, those 34 felony convictions. It’s about to be the Trump Show all the time — just not the Trump Show that Trump himself would’ve chosen.  

For decades, Trump relished his reputation as "Teflon Don," the hard-charging New York businessman to whom no mud seemed to stick. His 2016 upset presidential win certainly cemented that image of untouchability in the candidate’s own mind. Now Trump is facing something new: accountability.  

As Biden’s viral first ad reminds us, character matters. The American people seem to agree. 

Max Burns is a veteran Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies.