As I wrote here on May 31, the day after the verdict came down in the Soviet-style show trial of Donald Trump in Manhattan, it generally takes 1-2 weeks for the voting public to really digest the implications of a major event, and for that digestion to start showing up in the polling data. Here we are, two weeks later, and we are seeing signs of a shift now arriving.
At the end of last week, Biden boosters were claiming their guy had gotten a 1-2 swing in his favor in the polls that had been released that week. That seemed possibly accurate, though it was inconclusive since any shifts towards Old Joe were well within the margins of error of those polls. A 1 percent change in any poll is just so much statistical noise and really means nothing.
During the course of this week, though, all that pro-Biden chatter has died down as every one of those polls have trended back towards Trump again. Moreover, the data beneath the topline numbers have continued trending in Trump’s favor.
In my view, the most interesting aspect of this poll shift is the way in which the makeup of what we define as real “battleground states” has moved well in Trump’s favor.