A national survey conducted late last month by Canadian pollster Leger360 found that, on the question of “If Donald Trump was officially implicated in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking activities, would this make you more likely to vote for another party, or would it not affect your vote for Donald Trump?” just 23 percent of Republican respondents said “I would be more likely to vote for another party,” 26 percent said “Not sure / Prefer not to say,” and 47 percent said “It would not affect my vote for Donald Trump,” and no that question/answer was not worded all that precisely.
Trump isn’t running in 2028. He’s either going to leave office or cancel the election, so how could his fans learning about his “involvement” affect a vote that was already cast, other than prompting people to regret it? The question already asked whether it’d make them more likely to vote for another party. Stupid wording on that part. On the other hand the vagueness of the word “involvement” may seem just as dumb at first, but it’s actually pretty instructive. Lacking space to map out a whole hypothetical about evidence that MAGA voters would accept as authentic – since there almost certainly will never be short of Trump openly admitting to raping sex trafficking victims and even then – the condensing forces the GOP respondents to imagine that maximal version.
Which means the floor is at 47 percent, that in an outcome where, say, Trump himself publicly copped to raping multiple teenage sex trafficking victims but thought they were all over 18 and that Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein had lied to him about the girls’ ages (so he’s the real victim). The ceiling? Maybe somewhere like 85 percent of Republican voters, the percentage that did not say “Yes” on the question of “Do you believe that Donald Trump was involved in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking activities?” Another 22 percent weren’t sure and 63 percent said no, slightly lower than the number of Trump voters who said the same on an Economist/YouGov survey last month.
Leger also found Trump’s job approval rating at a pretty abysmal 37 percent just six months in.