So what does the Trump conviction mean for the election outcome? At his Silver Bullet site, numbers guy Nate Silver writes several wise things.
This is an unprecedented circumstance, and there’s no good way to rigorously model the impact. Everybody is just guessing.
A fair number of voters had said they’d switch their votes in the event of a Trump conviction — but these probably should not be taken quite at face value. As I wrote last month, voters are generally bad at answering hypotheticals.
My expectation is that Biden will see some improvement in his numbers — perhaps something roughly equivalent to a mini convention bounce — and the question is mostly about how steep it is and how long it persists.
The poker term for being in a dicey spot but where your odds have a chance to improve is “having outs”, meaning that you might catch some good cards to redeem your position. The possibility of a criminal conviction was one of the best outs Biden had left — and if it doesn’t move the numbers, I’m not sure what will.
