How the Trump trial verdict could affect the US elections

The jurors who heard the final arguments in the case of the former president of the United States began their deliberations this Wednesday (29) and are evaluating a verdict with potentially major implications for the Republican candidate's run for the White House in 2024.

The case marks the first criminal trial of a US president.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a payment that bought adult film star Stormy Daniels' silence just before the 2016 election.

The actress threatened to go public with an account of an alleged sexual encounter with the former president in 2006, which Trump denies.

The case tried in New York is seen by the public as the least important of the four criminal trials that Trump faces.

However, the Republican presidential candidate has spent more time in court than on the campaign trail in recent weeks and has drawn attention to the only case likely to be heard before his Nov. 5 election showdown against his biggest opponent, Democratic President Joe Biden.

The jury room's three potential outcomes — a guilty verdict, an acquittal or a hung jury — could affect Trump's presidential campaign. Understand how below.

Guilty verdict

Opinion polls show a guilty verdict could pose a significant political danger to Trump in an election that will potentially be determined in a handful of swing states.

One in four Republicans said they would not vote for Trump if he were found guilty in a criminal trial, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll in April. In the same poll, 60% of independents said they would not vote for Trump if he were convicted of a crime.

Republican and Democratic consultants have differing views on the impact of a guilt finding.

Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, has doubts about whether a quarter of Republicans actually won't vote for Trump if he is convicted.

The pollster said even if only a small number of more moderate Republicans and independents would be swayed toward a guilty verdict, that could help Biden in a close election.

However, Ayres believes the nature of the New York case, which was brought by a Democratic prosecutor and relies on untested legal strategies, will help the former president and his Republican colleagues frame a guilty verdict as a coup. political.

“If I were trying to design a court case that could easily be dismissed by Republicans as a partisan 'witch hunt,' I would design exactly the case that is being presented in New York,” says the expert.

Republican consultant Tricia McLaughlin, who worked on the campaign of 2024 GOP presidential primary candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, said she believes a guilty verdict would have a psychological impact on Trump.

For the consultant, the negative result would also divert more financial resources to legal projects because it would almost certainly be the case that the former president would appeal the verdict, she added.

Bill Galston, an analyst and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington, said he did not expect a guilty verdict to have a significant impact on the presidential race.

“Ultimately, this amounts to lying about sex. I think probably the view of most Americans is that everyone lies about sex,” says Galston, who worked on Democratic presidential campaigns.

The analyst also worked in the administration of President Bill Clinton, whose tenure in the White House in the 1990s was marked by sex scandals.

Not guilty verdict

Consultants across the political spectrum agree that an acquittal would be a huge victory for Trump, especially since he has claimed the trial is a sham political persecution aimed at derailing his presidential bid.

During the campaign, the candidate could use a not guilty verdict in New York to claim that the other cases against him also have no legal merit, said Republican consultant McLaughlin.

Trump faces federal and state charges in Washington and Georgia of trying to overturn his 2020 loss to Biden and federal charges in Florida of mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House in 2021.

The former president pleaded not guilty in all three cases.

“It’s great food for him,” McLaughlin said. “He'll say, 'I won this sham trial, this New York witch hunt, and that's what's going to happen with the other trials,'” he added.

Reuters/Ipsos did not investigate how an acquittal would affect voters' opinion of the presidential race.

Karen Finney, a Democratic consultant who worked in President Clinton's White House, said that for Trump's core supporters “an acquittal will make them feel vindicated and validated.”

But she says details revealed in trial testimony and the case's central allegation — that the Republican candidate arranged a secret payment to a porn star — could still harm him, even if jurors find him innocent.

“What was revealed during the case may dismay women that Trump still has issues,” Finney said, although he said he would interpret an acquittal as a “huge victory.”

Biden's campaign is preparing a statement to be issued after a result that will remind supporters that “the only way to defeat Trump is at the polls,” said an official familiar with the campaign's strategy.

Jury draw

If the 12 jurors deliberating Trump's case cannot agree on a unanimous verdict, the result will be a hung jury and the judge will have to declare a mistrial, legal experts say.

Trump will consider the mistrial a victory, but without the validation that an acquittal would give him, political consultants and analysts said.

The trial has kept the Republican candidate in the news, something he enjoys, said John Feehery, a Republican consultant who has worked for congressional leaders.

“A mistrial would put an end to this, while also not giving Trump a 'clean bill of health,'” he adds.

Democratic consultant Finney said that, whatever the verdict, Trump is expected to be free from the gag order imposed by the trial judge.

“Regardless of a hung jury, the scandalous facts of the case are now public knowledge,” Finney added.

A mistrial will also tell voters that at least some jurors believed Trump was guilty, according to the consultant.