The Conviction Effect

National polls show slight shift toward Joe Biden: In the roughly week and a half since former president (and presumptive Republican presidential nominee) Donald Trump was convicted of 34 felonies related to falsifying records to hide hush-money payments to a porn star, numerous national polls have indicated that voters have moved slightly toward incumbent president (and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee) Joe Biden.

A HarrisX/Forbes poll found Biden and Trump each getting a one-point bump after the verdict. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found a one-point bump for Biden, with Trump losing a point. A Morning Consult poll found a one-point bump for Biden, with Trump neither gaining nor losing any ground. And an Echelon Insights poll found a two-point Biden bump, with Trump support staying flat. (All poll results can be found in a chart here.)

The New York Times recontacted some 2,000 respondents they had polled this spring and found that “the group favored Mr. Trump by three points when originally interviewed in April and May, but this week they backed him by only one point.”

A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 25 percent of independents and 10 percent of Republicans are less likely to vote for Trump following his conviction. The poll “also found that 56% of Republican registered voters said the case would have no effect on their vote and 35% said they were more likely to support Trump, who has claimed the charges against him are politically motivated and has vowed to appeal,” Reuters reports. “The potential loss of a tenth of his party’s voters is more significant for Trump than the stronger backing of more than a third of Republicans, since many of the latter would be likely to vote for him regardless of the conviction.”

“The verdict has not overhauled the 2024 race nearly as much as Democrats hoped it would,” writes The Washington Post‘s Aaron Blake. “But the totality of the evidence suggests it has dinged Trump a little.”

Some of this perceived shift, ABC adds, could be the result of “differential partisan nonresponse bias”—basically, Republicans may be less keen to respond to polls right now given the bad news they’ve just been dealt in the form of a Trump conviction, while Democrats might be more excited to respond. And none of these shifts are massive; these changes are within the margin of error. Time will tell.

Scenes from D.C.: I present to you the most D.C. thing that I have ever seen, in honor of the fact that I spent a chunk of last week there. (Out of respect for my D.C.-based colleagues, I will not say anything unkind about this, uh, “city.”)

Possibly the most DC parade float ever pic.twitter.com/RIlcXEoOCI

— Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) June 9, 2024

• “If the footage of [Noa] Argamani being kidnapped on the back of a motorcycle on October 7 became a darkly iconic representation of that day’s horror,” writes Oliver Wiseman, “the footage of her reunion with her father represented will be remembered as an all too rare showing of hope.”
• “What if the U.S. cuts off aid to Israel?” asks Reason‘s Matt Welch.
• Today, Donald Trump—now a convicted felon—will sit for his probation interview.
• Colorado’s weed market comedown.
• Really good Odd Lots episode on the widely reviled practice of “personalized pricing.”
• Legitimately into this theory: Arranged marriage isn’t dead, it’s just in essence mediated by social media apps.

lots of normal people in middle america get into dating app marriages that look a lot like arranged marriages. meet someone with aligned values and comparable social status, full send to marriage within a couple months pic.twitter.com/ChhmKvHVJt

— cold ???? (@coldhealing) June 9, 2024

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