The dilemma for the Republican Party is that Donald Trump’s mounting legal troubles may be simultaneously strengthening him as a candidate for the GOP presidential nomination and weakening him as a potential general-election nominee.
Yet recent surveys have also signaled that this criminal charge—and other potential indictments from ongoing investigations—could deepen the doubts about Trump among the suburban swing voters who decisively rejected him in the 2020 presidential race, and powered surprisingly strong performances by Democrats in the 2018 and 2022 midterms. “It is definitely a conundrum that this potentially helps him in the primary yet sinks the party’s chances to win the general,” says Mike DuHaime, a GOP strategist who advises former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a potential candidate for the 2024 Republican nomination. “This better positions [in the primary] our worst candidate for the general election.”
But most Republicans think Trump is also benefiting from an impulse among GOP voters to lock arms around him as the Manhattan investigation has proceeded. In an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist College poll released this week, four-fifths of Republicans described the various investigations targeting Trump as a “witch hunt,” echoing his own denunciation of them. “There’s going to be some level of emotional response to someone being quote-unquote attacked,” Wilson said. “That’s going to get some sympathy points that will probably bolster poll numbers.”
The NPR/PBS Newshour/Marist survey underlines DuHaime’s point about the limits of Trump’s existing support: In that survey, a 61 percent majority of Americans—including 64 percent of independents and 70 percent of college-educated white adults—said they did not want him to be president again. That result was similar to the latest Quinnipiac University national poll, which found that 60 percent of Americans do not consider themselves supporters of Trump’s “Make America great again” movement. The challenge for the GOP is that about four-fifths of Republicans said they did consider themselves part of that movement, and about three-fourths said they wanted him back in the White House.
https://archive.fo/GWuLI
Once the charges are made public on Tuesday, polls could align more against Trump especially among Republicans.
The New York state judge who will be presiding over Trump's upcoming trial, Juan Merchan who was born in Colombia.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/01/politics ... index.html
News reports are that Trump's lawyers want to move his trial from New York County (Manhattan) to Richmond County (Staten Island). The City of New York is composed of five boroughs, Manhattan and Staten Island are two boroughs and each borough is a separate county in New York State. More Republican voters in Richmond County than in New York County.
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