Donald Trump Has a Polling Problem

The 50 percent threshold in a poll can sometimes be distracting. When more than half of people give a certain answer, it often becomes the dominant message to emerge from the poll question. It is the answer that appears to have won. Yet the most important information may nonetheless be lurking elsewhere.

Consider the surveys over the past week that have asked Americans their opinions about the federal charges against Donald Trump. Here are the results of an ABC News/Ipsos survey, which were similar to other poll results:

On first glance, a central message seems to be strong and continuing support for Trump — because a majority of Republicans said that the charges were not serious. Most Republicans also said that he should not have been charged with a crime and that the indictment was politically motivated.

Media headlines have emphasized these pro-Trump majorities. At a dinner with Democratic donors this week, Jill Biden said that she had just read one of these headlines and found it “a little shocking.” Republican voters, Biden said, “don’t care about the indictment.”

To be clear, Trump’s enduring support among Republicans is an important story. If it continues, he is likely to become the party’s nominee. That support is a sign that political polarization in the U.S. has become so intense that most Republican voters appear to care more about loyalty to Trump than about the possibility that he damaged national security by allowing sensitive intelligence to circulate.

But the existence of an enduring pro-Trump Republican majority is not the only important conclusion from the recent polls. A couple of subtler patterns in the data are more worrisome for Trump.

A decisive minority?

First, look at the relative sizes of the minority opinions in each category in that chart above: There are considerably more Republicans who consider the charges serious than Democrats or independents who do not think they’re serious. The indictment divides Republicans more than it divides Democrats.

A basic lesson of politics is that you win when the public debate is focused on issues that divide your opponent’s supporters and unite yours. Affirmative action, for example, is a problematic topic for the Democratic Party, even though most of its voters support the policy, because there are more Democrats who oppose it than Republicans who support it. (The Times recently explained how this dynamic led to a landslide defeat for an affirmative-action referendum in California.) For similar reasons, undocumented immigration creates political trouble for Democrats.

Problematic subjects for the Republican Party, on the other hand, include health care access, the minimum wage, same-sex marriage and, especially, abortion bans. The recent polls show that Trump’s behavior also falls into this category. Republicans who think he should have been charged with a crime outnumber Democrats who think he should not have been. “Trump splits the party,” says Jonathan Bernstein, a political scientist who writes for Bloomberg Opinion. “No, not evenly, but even an 80/20 split is a real split.”

Another problematic sign for Trump is that the number of Republicans bothered by his legal problems seems to be growing. So is the number among independents. More voters are bothered by the case against him — on charges of taking classified material and trying to conceal that he did — than by the earlier New York State charges related to hush money for a sexual encounter:

The bottom line

The 2024 election is still almost a year and a half away, and the prosecutors trying to hold Trump accountable will need to keep making their case not only in courtrooms but also to the public if they hope to convince most Americans of the seriousness of the charges. But those prosecutors do not need to convince most Republicans in order to succeed.

Just look at what happened in the 2022 midterm elections. A small slice of Republican voters was unhappy enough with Trump’s anti-democratic behavior (and the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling) to defect from the party, helping Democrats keep control of the Senate. The last two presidential elections offer a similar case study: Trump lost the presidency in 2020 partly because 11 percent of typical Republican voters supported Joe Biden, up from 9 percent who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, according to Catalist, a data firm.

Fifty percent isn’t the only number that matters when you’re looking at a subgroups in poll. Small shifts within each party can determine election outcomes.

Related: “On the night Mr. Trump announced his indictment, the wagons were circled” on Fox News, Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, wrote. “But after the indictment was released, the conversation became more mixed.”

More on politics

• People close to Trump say he has long been a pack rat. His attachment to boxes of documents is at the center of the latest indictment.

• Republicans in Congress reacted to the indictment by comparing the U.S. under Biden to a banana republic or a dictatorship. See their responses.

• Boris Johnson and Trump were both accused of breaking the rules. Only one of them lost support from his party.

• Southern Baptists’ decision to purge women from church leadership provides insight into the psyche of the evangelical right ahead of the 2024 election.

THE LATEST NEWS

Supreme Court

• In a 7-2 ruling, the Supreme Court upheld a law that tries to keep Native American adoptees with their tribes.

• Tribes are celebrating the decision as a win for their sovereignty.

• The court is also considering rulings on affirmative action and civil rights for gay people. These graphics compare recent Supreme Court rulings with public opinion.

Weather

• A tornado killed three people and injured at least 75 others in the Texas Panhandle.

• Smoke from Canadian wildfires is back in New York, but not as much of it as last week. The air is expected to be thickest this morning.

• A cyclone made landfall in India. More than 100,000 people fled.

• New Jersey is the first state to require that all grades learn about climate change. The focus is on problem-solving rather than doom.

War in Ukraine

• “It doesn’t count as a war crime if you had fun”: Russian troops’ graffiti reveals their mind-set.

• Ukraine’s counteroffensive has been bloody and slow, but American and Ukrainian officials insist it is working.

Other Big Stories

• Jack Teixeira, the Air National Guardsman who shared U.S. intelligence in an online chatroom, was indicted on charges of mishandling secrets.

• The Florida condo that collapsed two years ago, killing 98, had a pool deck with a “severe strength deficiency,” investigators found.

• New drugs are treating obesity, but the stigma around the condition remains.

• San Francisco officials are hoping an A.I. boom can revive the city, The Washington Post reports.

• A New York finance executive is accused of drugging and raping a 14-year-old girl. He kept spreadsheets of children and screenshots of teenage girls’ Instagram accounts, prosecutors say.

Opinions

Criticism of the judge in the Trump documents case is exaggerated and contributes to the dangerous view that the federal judiciary is politicized, Nick Akerman argues.

We’re in a new age of cancer drugs. But not enough people have access to them, Kate Pickert, a breast cancer survivor, writes.

Here are columns by David Brooks on the Jan. 6 hearings and Michelle Goldberg on Republicans and anti-L.G.B.T.Q. Muslims.

MORNING READS

Solo sailing: It’s a race around the world known as the “voyage for madmen.” Meet the first woman to win it, using only pre-1960s technology.

Communal Tesla: A ride share program is helping low-income communities access electric vehicles.

Modern Love: Drawing helped him build a new life after losing his partner.

Lives Lived: After two Oscars and decades as one of Britain’s most acclaimed actresses, Glenda Jackson gave up acting for politics, serving for 23 years as a member of Parliament. She died at 87.

SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETIC

U.S. Open: Rickie Fowler and Xander Schauffele both shot 62, a record for the tournament.

A surprise return: The U.S. men’s national team is set to bring Gregg Berhalter back as manager.

McGregor accused: The Miami Heat say they are investigating a woman’s allegation that the M.M.A. star Conor McGregor sexually assaulted her during Game 4 of the N.B.A. finals.

ARTS AND IDEAS

Honest ticket prices: Live Nation and other major ticketing companies announced yesterday that they would make it easier for customers to see the full price of tickets, including fees that can add 30 percent to the cost of seeing a concert or sporting event. The Biden administration has put pressure on the entertainment industry to rein in what it calls “junk fees.”

More on culture

• Spotify won’t renew its podcast contract with Prince Harry and Meghan.

• Major companies like TikTok and Shein are distancing themselves from China.

• Wes Anderson’s new film, “Asteroid City,” is comic and wry with the soul of a tragedy, Manohla Dargis writes.

• “Menace II Society” was a bleak film when it premiered 30 years ago. Now, it’s required viewing in Black households, Lawrence Ware writes.

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Roast salmon with gochujang sauce.

Read “Bad Summer People” by Emma Rosenblum. The Times review calls it an “addictive thriller of manners.”

Cool your home more efficiently.

Choose a last-minute Father’s Day gift.

Take our news quiz.

GAMES

Here are today’s Spelling Bee and the Bee Buddy, which helps you find remaining words. Yesterday’s pangram was audibly.

And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle and Sudoku.

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

P.S. The authors Amy Tan and Christian Cooper will discuss their love of birding at a Times virtual event on Thursday. Sign up here.

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