• last year
On "Forbes Newsroom," HarrisX Founder and CEO Dritan Nesho discussed the results of a new HarrisX/Forbes Poll showing the race between President Biden and former President Trump after Trump was found guilty in his NYC hush money trial, as well as voters' attitudes towards Trump and the trial.

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Transcript
00:00 Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis with Forbes Breaking News. Joining me now is Harris X CEO
00:08 and founder Driton Nesho. Driton, thank you so much for joining me once again.
00:13 Thanks for having me back, Brittany.
00:15 You came on yesterday right after the news broke that Donald Trump is a convicted felon.
00:21 But now you're coming back with some numbers for us on what voters actually think of the
00:25 verdict. What are they?
00:28 So the news team at Forbes and Harris X got together to do a flash poll overnight. Over
00:34 a thousand voters across the country reacting to yesterday's story. And I would say that
00:41 the big takeaway, there are several big takeaways, but the biggest one is that it hasn't changed
00:48 the nature of the race or the horse race at all. When we look at our question, who would
00:54 you vote for Biden or Trump? Or are you unsure? Trump is at 43 percent. Biden is at 42 percent.
01:02 And about 14 percent say that they're unsure or don't know. So the race is still a toss
01:07 up, right? And we've seen for several months now, the numbers moving up a few points in
01:15 one direction, down a few points in another direction and so forth. So really no fundamental
01:21 change to the race and frankly, no fundamental change on the question of which way do the
01:30 unsure, the undecided lean. Right. Right now, when we force the undecided to pick whether
01:39 they lean towards Biden or towards Trump, it's a 50/50 split. Half are going one way,
01:45 half are going the other way. So even when you factor in the undecided, the horse race,
01:51 it's two points off with Trump at 51 percent, Biden at 49 percent. So it doesn't seem to
01:59 have changed the dynamic of the race yet. And, you know, so far, things seem to be holding
02:08 fairly steady for both of the candidates. Driton, I need to know why here, because if
02:16 you're in politics and your contender is a convicted felon, I mean, that is a political
02:23 gift from God. You would think you would you would win. It would be an easy race. You're
02:27 saying voters are unmoved. Is there any indication why? Well, a lot of voters paid attention
02:36 to the trial. Right. And, you know, the numbers suggest that close to two thirds of the country
02:43 was paying close attention to this trial. And I think that a lot of the information
02:51 that came out or even the expectation that Trump was guilty of the aggregate, right,
02:59 was already baked in, was already baked in. Public opinion was already baked in into the
03:04 decision model or the decision framework that voters are using. So while the news is in
03:13 and of itself historical and shocking, it doesn't necessarily seem to have moved voters
03:23 in part because voters were closely tuned to it and maybe they just expected this.
03:30 And we were talking yesterday, we were talking about how this is going to be a race that
03:34 comes down to the independents. And this isn't going to be the end all be all for them. Instead,
03:39 this is a piece of a larger puzzle. Is there any indication that this is moving independents
03:46 one way or another? Yeah, it seems to, you know, have colored the reaction of independents
03:55 a little bit. And what I mean by that is that up until now, independents were breaking for
04:02 Trump or on aggregate by a few points, seem to have been breaking for Trump. And as we
04:09 look at the various questions that we ask around the trial and also the horse race,
04:15 it now seems like on aggregate the independents are breaking for Biden. And again, these are
04:21 very small differences. Right. So we're talking about a few point differences here, here and
04:26 there. Maybe that'll be sustained. Maybe that'll change. Right. Maybe after the first impact
04:34 of this news and after we're past this news cycle and on to next week with Hunter Biden's
04:41 federal trial is starting, maybe that will recalibrate, right, and snap back in the way
04:47 that it used to be before. But right now we're not seeing fundamental shifts. And again,
04:56 we asked a series of questions of everyone and everyone seems to be split. Right. We
05:02 asked, was the trial fair and unbiased or was it politically motivated? 49 percent fair
05:09 and unbiased overall, 51 percent said politically motivated. The responses had to be highly
05:17 partisan. So Republicans, obviously, over eight in ten say politically motivated and
05:23 Democrats, eight in ten say fair and unbiased. But independents are split, 52 to 48 percent.
05:31 The other thing that I would say, Brittany, is that there was a big question whether or
05:35 not these trials should have been held in these heavy Democratic jurisdictions, in this
05:43 case New York City. Right. And whether or not that would be real or perceived bias.
05:49 Overall, when you ask voters that question, 54 percent said that they should have been
05:55 moved to avoid the real or perceived bias. And independents tend to break a little bit
06:03 on the other side and say it's possible for the jurors to have bought in their conscience
06:08 and to have bought in their mind. So it's 54 percent who said that versus 46 percent
06:14 who said the trials should have been moved. But again, these differences are very small.
06:18 Right. And this trial in general has galvanized each of the bases, has divided independents
06:27 and the rest of the country even further. But the division is roughly equal on both
06:32 sides. Right. So things haven't really changed what they were.
06:37 I mean, your numbers are suggesting exactly what we've seen as the response from lawmakers.
06:42 We've seen GOP lawmakers pretty united in their response that this is a rigged, a rigged
06:48 judicial process. Here it was a rigged trial, a sham outcome. And Democrats have been united
06:53 in their response that no one is above the law in the poll. Did voters do voters think
06:59 that Trump is guilty or does that fall amongst party lines?
07:04 So by a small margin, voters think that Trump was guilty. I mean, we asked the question,
07:12 regardless of what you think of Donald Trump, do you think he's mostly guilty of the crimes
07:17 that he has just been convicted of in the state of New York or were these politically
07:22 motivated charges in a trial held in a demographic, a democratic jurisdiction? And he was, you
07:29 know, largely not guilty. Fifty seven percent say largely guilty or mostly guilty. Forty
07:35 seven percent, 43 percent say largely not guilty. And again, the partisan splits are
07:42 fascinating. Right. Eighty one percent of Republicans say not guilty. Twenty percent
07:47 say guilty. Ninety one percent of Democrats say guilty. Ten percent say not guilty. An
07:54 independent split. Sixty forty, 60 percent say guilty and 40 percent say not guilty.
08:01 Now, what's important is that this was largely expected in a similar question that we read
08:09 three weeks ago. Fifty five percent expected Trump to be guilty. So when I say that it's
08:17 already factored in into public opinion, that's what I mean, that I think that the decision
08:22 went by and large in line with the broad expectation of each of the voter groups and voters in
08:29 general. And that's why it hasn't changed the overall nature of the race or the overall
08:34 consideration that these voters are making around who they would pick as their next president.
08:42 We saw within the past 24 hours since the verdict came out that the verdict really galvanized
08:47 Trump's base. His campaign said that it was a historic day for them. The donation page
08:54 crashed after the verdict temporarily, and they raised thirty four point eight million
08:59 dollars in small dollar donations less than 24 hours after the verdict. And twenty nine
09:04 point seven percent of the donors are new to the platform, according to the campaign.
09:10 Is there any indication from the poll that this is galvanizing the Biden base in the
09:14 same way? Maybe disenfranchised Democrats who were going to sit this election out, not
09:19 turn out deciding, hey, I need to get off my couch. I need to vote because I don't want
09:23 a convicted felon to be the president. Yeah, I mean, there is a lot of signals that show
09:32 that it's galvanizing both bases, but roughly by equal amounts, I would say. And in the
09:40 all important question of, you know, does the verdict make you more or less likely to
09:46 vote for Donald Trump in November or does the verdict have no impact on your vote? The
09:54 numbers are roughly split again. Thirty percent said more likely to vote for Trump. Twenty
10:00 seven percent said less likely to vote for Trump. And forty four percent said no impact
10:07 on my vote. This is amongst all the voters. When you look at Republicans, 57 percent said
10:12 more likely to vote for Trump, 11 percent less likely to vote for Trump. And about a
10:18 third said no impact on my vote. Democrats, you almost flip it. Ten percent said more
10:23 likely to vote for Trump. So Trump's got some traction, I guess, with the Democratic base,
10:29 as Biden does with the Republican base at the 10 percent level. Forty one percent said
10:35 less likely to vote for Trump. Forty eight percent say no impact on my vote. And independents
10:42 broke a little bit with less likely to vote for Trump. Twenty eight percent, more likely
10:50 22 percent and 51 percent said no impact on my vote. But again, these differences are
10:56 small and that's why they're not changing the horse race. So maybe they change the horse
11:01 race from Trump being ahead of Biden three, four points to now it being a tie, right?
11:10 Essentially a statistical tie. So, you know, there's very much this phenomenon of Teflon
11:15 Trump, right? These things are not really impacting his traction with Republicans or
11:25 really making up the minds of independents. It's another data point for it. They don't
11:31 like it. They think that being a convicted felon isn't a good thing for the president.
11:36 But is this the reason why they will be picking the president or not? It's unlike it's unlikely
11:42 that it will be on this. When you look at this poll about Trump's verdict and the reaction
11:49 to it 24 hours after, was there anything interesting, any takeaways when you look at it based on
11:54 the demographic? Well, I think that, you know, we had some interesting questions that
12:03 we formulated together with the news team at Forbes. So they're less about demographic
12:08 differences where things are roughly falling in line or with expectation and much more
12:15 about the reaction to this verdict compared to the previous verdict, right, that Trump
12:22 received in the civil case, the sexual assault case that E.J. Carroll put forward. And so
12:29 we asked the question, do you think this felony verdict on business falsification charges,
12:35 the hodgepodge verdict is worse than the civil case in which Trump was found guilty of sexual
12:41 assault? Or do you think that that civil case was worse? Forty eight percent said the felony
12:51 verdict is worse. Fifty two percent said the sexual assault case is worse. And that holds
12:58 roughly consistent. And when we ask which label do you think is more damaging to Donald
13:05 Trump? Fifty nine percent said actually convicted sexual assaulter is a worse label than convicted
13:12 felon, which was 41 percent. So, again, Trump, there's so many cases and the public has been
13:23 inundated with so many of these legal pieces that it has created almost a level of sensitivity
13:30 towards that. And they're sticking more to issues based decisions than to these character
13:37 based decisions. At the end of the day, a majority of the country doesn't like either
13:43 Biden or Trump. So this election doesn't seem to be unfolding and playing out on the basis
13:49 of personality and character. It's unfolding and playing out on the basis of issues. Therefore,
13:56 we see a lot more resistance to the public moving on news topics or news events like
14:02 the one we just went through with the felony conviction and a lot more on issue based.
14:11 That's really interesting. So as we've said, the presidential election is in five months.
14:17 This has already been baked in, but it's going to be even more so in five months from now.
14:22 And there's going to be countless, countless new cycles from now and then many events to
14:26 unfold until November. So you're saying this will just be a flashpoint. This is not the
14:33 main story for the election. Yeah, I think that this will move some segments of voters.
14:40 Of course, when we ask more or less likely to vote for Trump, women tend to say, you
14:48 know, less likely by a five point margin. For men, it doesn't matter. In fact, they
14:54 say they're saying more likely after this conviction, 18 to 34 year old, the younger
15:00 voter groups are saying less likely by 17 points to vote for Trump. So 40 percent less
15:07 likely to vote for him, 23 percent more likely. But the other groups, you know, 20 sorry,
15:16 35 to 49 year olds, 50 to 64 year olds and 65 plus, they're basically saying more likely
15:23 to vote for Trump. Right. These are voter groups that are not being fooled by this news.
15:29 And I think that the polling that will come out, we're the first to come out with our
15:35 flash poll, but there will be, I'm sure, many other polls really should be looked at closely
15:41 to see where there is resistance, where voter groups are making up their minds on other
15:48 issues or on other topics versus where we see, you know, fungibility, right, or where
15:56 we see this news move the dial. Right now, it's very few groups that are really moving
16:05 on this news. Some younger voters, some female voters, but it's yet to be seen whether or
16:12 not this is the same. Well, Driton, as those numbers come out, I'm sure you and I will
16:19 have many conversations breaking them out down per usual. Thank you so much for joining
16:23 me. Thank you very much. Have a good weekend.
16:26 Thank you.
16:27 Thank you.
16:27 Thank you.

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