Donald Trump’s electoral strategy seems to focus on energizing his base. However, the key demographic that decides general elections has a negative view of him following his indictment in connection with the Stormy Daniels payoff. Independents turned out in force against him in 2018 and again in 2020.
Donald Trump: Can He Convince Independents
Independents are not paying attention to reports on Fox News or in the Conservative echo chamber about the weakness of Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg’s case against Trump.
Two weeks ago, the ABC News/Ipsos poll showed that 40% of Independents thought that Trump should be charged with a crime. Last week, the same poll found that 54% of Independents now thought that Trump should be charged.
“Currently, just over half of Americans (52%) view the charges against Trump as serious (was 50% last week). Additionally, half of Americans (50%) say Trump should have been charged with a crime in this case, up five percentage points from last week. The slight changes in both cases look to be drawing from people who said ‘don’t know’ in the earlier survey, a number that is down six percentage points in both questions,” Ipsos said in its press release about the latest poll of 566 adults conducted on April 6-7.
Any Republican candidate wanting to oust Joe Biden needs to win among Independents.
Trump won a slight plurality of Independent voters in 2016 against Hillary Clinton by a 43 percent to 42 percent margin, according to Pew Research.
Fewer people are remaining undecided about Trump; 50% of undecideds now believe that Trump should be charged with a crime. That was up five points from the week before when 45% of undecideds told pollsters that Trump should be charged.
And 53% believe that Trump had criminal intent.
A Tough Challenge for Trump
Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich notes that Independents tend to be more Liberal on cultural issues and that they swung toward Democrats last during the midterm elections by 49% to 47% margin.
“Why? Because most independents loathe Trump as much as Democrats do and they oppose everything Trump has inflicted on America – including an army of election deniers and an anti-abortion supreme court,” Reich wrote. “In 2020, independents preferred Biden over Trump, 52% to 37%.
Reich continued: “When Trump’s star was fading and DeSantis’s brightening, it seemed possible that some independents might be drawn back to the Republicans in 2024. But if Trump is the Republican candidate, as seems increasingly likely, most independents will support Biden, as they did in 2020.”
Trump’s abrasive personality endears him to his blue-collar base; however, it pushes away Independents who tend to be more college-educated and affluent. Once reliably Republican suburban counties became Democratic strongholds under Trump.
DeSantis led Trump among Independents in a Quinnipiac poll taken before the indictment and him beating President Joe Biden in the general election by a 54% to 35% margin.
“You can’t win with just Republicans,” DeSantis said in an interview with Piers Morgan last month. “You’ve gotta win with independents, and you need to convince some of these Democrats, which I was able to do in Florida, because they’re not woke, they don’t like some of the nonsense going on. They want their streets safe, and they want quality education. So I think you could appeal to people across the canvas.”
John Rossomando is a senior analyst for Defense Policy and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award in 2008 for his reporting.
