Trump loses 53% of swing state voters if found guilty

A majority of swing-state voters say they would be unwilling to vote for former president Trump if he were convicted of a crime, according to a Morning Consult/Bloomberg poll. The poll, which included roughly 5,000 voters from Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, found that 53% of respondents wouldn’t vote for Trump if one of his criminal cases resulted in a conviction. 

If Trump were to go to jail, that number rose only slightly to 55% who said they wouldn’t vote for him.  

The poll was conducted from Jan. 16 to Jan. 22, between the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary. Trump hasn’t yet officially won the Republican nomination, as former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley continues her run in the party’s primary. 

These seven swing states would play a critical role in the upcoming election, especially for Trump. In 2020, he lost six of those seven states, winning only North Carolina. The 2020 election already proved difficult for Trump in critical swing states. In 2020, the Biden campaign succeeded in flipping five swing states—Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, and Pennsylvania—that Trump had won in 2016. 

Two of those states, Georgia and Arizona, represented significant milestones in the 2020 race. A Democrat hadn’t won Georgia since 1992 when Bill Clinton beat incumbent President George H.W. Bush by a razor-thin margin of 0.6%. Meanwhile, Fox News’ call that Biden had won Arizona—which a Democrat hadn’t done since Clinton’s reelection campaign in 1996—telegraphed that Trump would lose the election. 

Even a notable chunk of Republican voters in these seven swing states would be hesitant to vote for Trump should he be convicted. Twenty-three percent of those identifying as Republicans say they wouldn’t vote for Trump should that happen. That number seems relatively evenly spread across the ideological curve, with 21% of conservative Republicans saying they wouldn’t vote for a convicted Trump. 

As expected, Democrats overwhelmingly say they wouldn’t vote for a convicted Trump, with 83% ruling out the possibility. 

Two of Trump’s criminal cases could have a verdict before Election Day in November. In New York, where he is charged with falsifying business records stemming from a hush-money payment made to a porn actress to cover up an affair, a trial is set for March 25. While in his adopted home state of Florida, where he is charged with 42 counts of mishandling classified documents, a judge set a tentative start date in May. But even the spring start dates don’t guarantee the two cases will be over by the time voters head to the polls in November.  

The remaining two cases, one in Georgia and one at the federal level regarding the aftermath of the 2020 election that Trump falsely claimed he won, don’t yet have trial dates. If Trump were to win the 2024 election with any of his cases not yet resolved, it leaves open the possibility that he may be convicted of a crime while in office.