The political implications of Donald Trump’s conviction

Good morning and welcome to US Election Countdown. I’m standing in for Steff this week while she takes a well-deserved vacation. Today we’re covering:

• The politics of Trump’s indictment

• Which way will Michigan go?

• A shift among young voters

During the six weeks of Donald Trump’s “hush money” trial, Joe Biden was largely mum on the matter. But now that Trump is officially a convicted criminal, the Biden camp is turning up the heat [free to read].

The president’s re-election campaign on Saturday called Trump a “convicted felon” who would “destroy our justice system, shred our democracy, rig our economy for their billionaire donors, and attack the very idea of America”.

The shift in strategy comes as some Democrats are urging the president to be even more aggressive following Thursday’s verdict.

“Sometimes Democrats get so precious, so afraid to get their hands dirty or afraid to anger Trump’s supporters . . . our party misses the opportunity,” Christy Setzer, a Democratic strategist, told the FT’s James Politi. “Let’s not do that here, on a story that has the power to fundamentally change the trajectory of the race, and history.”

Ten per cent of Republican voters and 25 per cent of independent voters were less likely to vote for Trump due to the verdict, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that was conducted after the conviction.

Tony Fabrizio, a pollster for Trump, rejected the idea that there had been any big effect on the former president’s electability.

“We told our donors and supporters that our polling in these target states was indicating that most all of the trial impact was ‘baked in the cake’ and that we expected marginal impact from an adverse ruling,” he said in a memo distributed by the Trump campaign on Saturday.

We’ll have more tea leaves to read from as more polling comes in over the next few weeks.

Campaign clips: the latest election headlines

• Joe Biden is set to issue an order today that would tighten immigration, as he confronts one of his biggest political weaknesses. [Free to read]

• Spending on healthcare, which has helped prop up a strong US jobs market, could be vulnerable if Trump is re-elected, according to analysts.

• Hunter Biden appeared in court yesterday on gun charges for the first trial of a sitting US president’s son. Here’s a helpful primer on the trial. (FT, Politico)

• Trump and the Republican National Committee raised $141mn in May, more than double April’s total, according to the campaign. (Bloomberg)

• Trump’s first public appearance after his conviction was at an Ultimate Fighting Championship match, where his hypermasculine appeal was on full display. (NYT)

Behind the scenes

When Donald Trump won Michigan in 2016 it was the first time a Republican took the state since 1988. With the former president maintaining a slight polling lead in the Great Lake State, will it go red again in 2024?

The FT’s Claire Jones recently travelled to Michigan to find out what voters there are thinking.

Economically the state is booming; a far cry from the doldrums of 2008. But like elsewhere in the US, the good times are largely being felt among those who are already better off, while the poor still struggle.

“Even stupid things like fast food is one and a half times what it used to be, ordering a pizza for the family is way more expensive than what it was, we hardly go on vacation anymore because it’s too costly,” said Nelson Westrick, a worker at Ford Motor Company who lives in Macomb County, where Trump won just over 53 per cent of the vote in 2020.

Trump leads Biden in Michigan by half a percentage point, according to a RealClearPolitics polling average, but Westrick has his doubts after the “deep blue” turnout in the 2022 midterms.

“The left has everything — the supreme court, the governor, the House, the Senate, the secretary of state, the attorney-general. There’s not one item of government governance that they don’t own,” he said. 

Read more in Claire’s dispatch that is publishing on FT.com tomorrow.

Datapoint

How do you do, fellow kids?

Donald Trump, 77, over the weekend joined Joe Biden, 81, on TikTok.

The former president’s foray on to the social platform — whose users are generally younger than those on other sites — seems to be the campaign’s latest attempt to resonate with Gen Z and Millennial voters.

TikTok presence aside, Trump has gained his largest lead over Biden since the end of March among young adults, according to the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll.

Of registered Gen Z and Millennial voters polled between May 21 and May 23, 40 per cent said they would vote for Trump if the election were held today, compared with 34 per cent who said they would support Biden.

“In the multi-candidate field [which includes third-party candidates Robert F Kennedy Jr, Jill Stein and Cornel West], it’s the younger people who are bailing on Biden,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion. “Stein and West are taking from Biden in that age group.”

In a head-to-head match up between only Trump and Biden, however, Biden leads Trump by six points in this age cohort. Miringoff has noted that Biden is doing “unusually well” among older voters who have a higher propensity to show up on election day.

The jury is still out on what the younger voters thought of the three leading candidates attempting to wade into pop culture with their own rap videos . . .

Viewpoints

• The verdict in Trump’s “hush money” trial has had no material impact, writes Republican pollster Frank Luntz. He explains how Trump defies electoral gravity.

• In the Swamp Notes newsletter, Peter Spiegel and Rana Foroohar weigh whether Trump’s conviction signals the end of American exceptionalism. [Available for Premium subscribers]

• The FT’s US legal correspondent Joe Miller reflects on how bookkeeping was more powerful than bombast in Trump’s “hush money” trial.

• It’s beyond “bad vibes”. The flaws in the economic system are real, and better “messaging” from the Biden campaign won’t fix them, says Ruchir Sharma.