Karl Rove says Donald Trump’s conviction in his New York hush money trial is indeed having an impact on polling.
Speaking on Fox News on Saturday, the veteran Republican strategist said that the numbers show voters are moving away from the former president now that he is a convicted felon.
Rove was asked about the latest polling by Paul Gigot, host of The Journal Editorial Report and the editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal.
Gigot asked about the most recent Fox News poll, which this week enraged Trump by showing President Joe Biden with a two-point lead nationally, and whether he agreed it was connected to the felony conviction.
“I agree,” replied Rove revealing a small whiteboard with the latest polling figures. “In fact, take a look at the evidence.”
He then walked Gigot through polling since June 1, the day after the guilty verdict, and chronologically showed a changing trend from Trump being up by one or two points to Biden being up by the same amount.
“In fact, if you look at the RealClear Politics national average, which is 11 polls … it’s Trump up by one half of one per cent,” said Rove.
“Assuming that we’ve continued to see close numbers, we’re likely to see that lead dissipate because the most recent polls have had Biden ahead.”
The latest Fox News head-to-head poll has Biden at 50 per cent and Trump at 48 per cent.
Since May, the poll has seen a three-point change in the presidential race, as Trump was ahead by one point last month.
Biden is also leading by one point ahead of Trump, 43 per cent to 42 per cent, in the expanded Fox News poll that includes five presidential candidates, including Robert F Kennedy Jr, who received 10 per cent, and Jill Stein and Cornel West, who both got two per cent.
The survey also revealed that some voters may be becoming more positive about the US economy, as around one-third of voters, 32 per cent, said that the economy is in excellent or good shape, the highest the poll number has been during Biden’s presidency. The previous high was 30 per cent.
However, the majority of respondents, 56 per cent, are still pessimistic about the state of the economy.
A furious Trump raged at Fox News on Truth Social, writing in part: “The latest Fox News poll is TRASH! They used a biased, Democrat-leaning sample of voters, polling more Biden 2020 voters than Trump 2020 voters to skew the results in favor of Crooked Joe. I am leading BIG in virtually every other poll, including in all of the key battleground states.”
