Before the beginning of our current “Trump era” of American politics, there was no precedent for our frequent use of the word “unprecedented.” In fact, the term comes up so much in news and commentary that it has pretty much become a cliché. Now, there are few things related to Trump that can’t be called unprecedented.
With that in mind, one cannot know precisely what impact former President Trump’s conviction in a Manhattan court on Thursday will have on this election; indeed, there are no historical patterns to point to for guidance. Those who predict that it will irreparably dent his electability and those who say it will have no effect are probably both engaging in wishful thinking.
For those in neither camp, or for those just trying to look at the question as clinically as possible, here are some factors that make this contest an exceedingly "mature race” not easily shifted in either direction.
First, general elections today are driven much more by partisanship than anything else. In 2020, the National Election Pool exit poll showed exactly 94 percent of self-described Republicans gave Trump their votes, precisely the same percentage of Democrats who backed Biden. The Fox News/Wall Street Journal exit poll showed 95 and 91 percent party support, respectively. Four years earlier, Trump had the support of 88 percent of Republicans, while Hillary Clinton garnered the backing of 89 percent of Democrats.
The same holds true in midterm elections. In the 2022 NEP exit poll, 96 percent of Republicans voted Republican, and the same percentage of Democrats voted Democratic. The Fox/WSJ poll was almost identical, with 95 percent of Democrats and 94 percent of Republicans staying in their lanes.
Back in the day, a not-insubstantial share of Democrats were either fairly or very conservative; they were among the first to jump ship if their party nominated a particularly weak candidate or if Republicans offered someone more compelling. Likewise, there were plenty of liberal Republicans who were prone to vote Democratic if the GOP candidate was inadequate or if the Democrat was especially attractive. But now, the parties are far more ideologically cohesive than they used to be; that homogeneity creates more uniform support for party nominees on each side. That means less volatility: The roller-coaster phenomenon that once existed has been replaced by high floors and low ceilings. To borrow a term from political scientist Lynn Vavreck, the parties and their members have become sclerotic.
Second, more specific to this Biden-Trump race is the fact that both Trump and Biden have 100 percent name recognition and are as well defined in the minds of voters as they can be. In other circumstances, a lesser-known but still adequately funded candidate might have some upside as more voters become familiar with them. That is not the case here.
Third, and specifically applicable to this presumptive GOP presidential nominee, at least since the October 2016 release of the infamous Access Hollywood tape, few people have mistaken Trump for an Eagle Scout. Any theoretically malleable voters who have supported him since then do so despite his personality, words, deeds, behavior, and perceptions of his character, not because of them. This goes double for any voters predisposed to reject Biden.
That leads to a fourth reason: Many nominal Republicans or GOP-leaning independents with conservative sympathies who might be tempted to vote against Trump on personal or behavioral grounds may also be hesitant to support Biden thanks to what they perceive as his aggressively progressive agenda and priorities. Biden rode to the nomination in 2020 partly to thwart the progressive wing of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. So it was something of a surprise that Biden, a former member of the centrist and business-friendly Democratic Leadership Council, went on to embark on an agenda that came to be dubbed as “historic and transformational.”
Many high-profile business leaders were known to be uncomfortable with Trump, but in recent weeks, some have moved in his direction and even endorsed him. Quite simply, they see Trump’s economic policy and relations with the business community as more favorable, or less acrimonious, than Biden’s have been. Whether this translates into some resistance on the voter level will be interesting to watch.
Of course, Trump’s conviction could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, the event that brings all of his transgressions back to haunt him. But at least since Trump rode down the golden escalator, there is no precedent for that.
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