Not many, but a few
The New York Times went out into the wild to see if voters care about the fact that the Republicans are voting for a wealthy, white, hugely powerful convicted felon for president. They found that the Maga cult still loves him and the normal people still hate him but there are a few undecided/independent voters who might be swayed:
[O]n the margins, with the remaining undecided voters, having a felon as the Republican Party’s standard-bearer could make the decision to pick Mr. Trump harder, maybe a lot harder.
Oscar Cisneros, 50, who described himself as an independent voter, said that while he supported Mr. Biden in 2020, he had been put off more recently by the president’s age and apparent slip-ups, and that he was undecided about whom to vote for in the fall. But now, he said, Mr. Trump had added to his baggage.
“It gives you a different point of view: How can you be a president if you’re being found guilty of hush money?” asked Mr. Cisneros, who works for the City of Phoenix. “OK, dude, you’re guilty. I don’t know if I want you up there.”
The conviction could only help shore up Mr. Biden’s left flank, which had been wavering amid criticism over his handling of Israel’s war in Gaza, launched after the deadly Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, and other progressive priorities.
[…]
But undecided voters are out there. In New York Times/Siena College battleground polls in October, about 7 percent of Mr. Trump’s supporters said they would vote for Mr. Biden if Mr. Trump were found guilty in an unspecified criminal trial.
More recently, a Marquette Law School poll taken during the hush-money trial found that a modest lead for Mr. Trump among registered voters nationwide became a four-point lead for Mr. Biden if Mr. Trump were found guilty.
This is especially interesting:
A number of young Trump supporters who were interviewed scoffed at the conviction, calling the entire trial a charade. They then admitted that they probably would not vote in November.
Black voters, especially Black men, have slipped away from Mr. Biden over the last four years, but 27 percent of Black voters who backed Mr. Trump told pollsters from The New York Times and Siena College before the verdict that a conviction would flip them to Mr. Biden, compared with just 5 percent of white respondents who said that.
Daryl Jones, 49, who is Black, made it clear that he remained a fan of Mr. Trump’s as he cut hair at the busy Universal Barber Shop in Des Moines on Thursday evening. Yet when it came to the former president’s convictions, Mr. Jones was resolute.
“Well, you do the crime, you’ve got to do the time,” he said. “So, at the same time, if he’s wrong, he’s wrong. And he was wrong.”
This is just anecdotal, of course. Who knows if it will add up to anything? And time may very well make this seem like the proverbial old news and nobody will care anymore. If Democrats are smart they will find a way to fold this into the broader message about abuse of power, hostility to democracy, the Big Lie, fraud, sexual assault etc. The list is long and they should not shrink from laying it out.