No, These Indictments Don't Strengthen Trump. That's Just Media Nonsense | Opinion

Now that Special counsel Jack Smith has dropped a devastating, historic set of charges on Donald Trump for conspiring to end American democracy, we're going to hear a lot more of one of the flimsiest hot takes out there: Indictments only strengthen Donald Trump.

Wrong.

Let me say this clearly: There's no real evidence that prior indictments have helped Trump. There's no reason that these new charges will. And there's a much better explanation for why his lead in the Republican primary field has grown in the past three months.

Despite what the headlines would have you believe, if you look at a the neutral polling average at FiveThirtyEight, Trump got an unimpressive increase of only two points after his New York arraignment, and an even milder point and a half after the classified documents indictment. And both effects faded shortly after. Not exactly a show-stopper, and these kinds of minor, temporary movements are consistent with patterns we saw after the FBI search of his home at Mar-a-Lago and during his first impeachment.

And if previous indictments didn't help Trump, then these probably won't either. Plus, the underlying theory of the case is based on flawed, motivated reasoning. We're frequently told that the indictments reinforce Trump's core message that the system is rigged. But Republican voters know Trump's victim grievance schtick backwards and forwards by now. Is a new indictment really bringing him any lasting Republican votes that he didn't have before?

Trump's minor, short-term polling bumps are actually the result of something much more boring and technical: It's called differential non-response bias, and it basically means his super-supporters might get more fired up to answer calls from pollsters for just a few days. It fits the pattern here pretty well.

The indictments aren't helping Trump and they aren't the reason he's increasing his lead. For that, you can thank the fact that Ron DeSantis is a historically terrible candidate. As the second place contender, he's widely viewed as the most likely Trump alternative, and as he has gotten more exposed in the national press, he's dropped half of his support. From March 10 through August 1, DeSantis went from 31.4 percent to 15.6 percent.

And where did those voters go? That ain't exactly rocket science either. Surveys show that Trump is the second choice of around 40 percent of DeSantis supporters. Lo and behold, as DeSantis has sunk, about 40 percent of the 15 point evaporation in his support has now shown up in Trump's column.

In fact, take a look at any reasonable, non-biased poll or polling average over the past four months: Like a mountain reflecting on a clear lake, Trump and DeSantis' polling levels look like mirror images.

When you think about it, there's an obvious, Occam's Razor story of what's happening. In the short run, the weakness of Trump's opponents and the cultish obsession of his core supporters is keeping him in a strong position in the primary. But the long run is a different, more poisonous story for the former President.

For one thing, there's recent polling data showing that fewer and fewer Republicans believe he did "nothing wrong," and that more of them are becoming open to supporting someone else. For another, Trump's burgeoning legal fees have left his campaign flat broke, a problem that will only get worse as charges mount and parasitically drain even more of his resources. Not to mention that he's making less in fundraising off of his indictments, quite possibly because Republicans are getting bone tired of being his legal piggy bank.

And finally, even if a cowed Republican electorate dominated by Trump die-hards hands him their nomination for a third straight time, are any of these legal disasters getting him any new votes in the 2024 general election from independents, Democrats, or Republicans who have already forsaken him?

Maybe Trump's primary polling will continue to rise in the months ahead. Maybe he'll keep cake-walking through these primaries. But don't get sucked into motivated reasoning spin or lazy math that it's because his legal woes are some kind of boon.

All these indictments are bad for Trump, and if Republicans want to finally break away from his demon-grip on their necks, they'll need to pick a stronger alternative, and soon.

Matt Robison is a writer, podcast host, and former congressional staffer.

The views in this article are the writer's own.