“The impeachment will favor Trump among his voter base but will hurt him among key undecideds”

Will Trump keep his candidacy despite the impeachment?

Absolutely! He is 100% committed to his candidacy and will stick with it unless something definitive stops him, like a health problem.

Will the impeachment, and possibly others, help or hurt Trump?

As a political scientist, I can make a guess, but until we see the polls we won’t know for sure. My expectation is that the news will help Trump among Republican voters, but probably hurt him a bit among independents, who are critical voters in a presidential election. The legal cases will help him among Republican voters, because they will see them as evidence of biased and unfair attacks on Trump by his enemies. They will join his side. The legal cases will likely hurt Trump among independents, because they will be seen in part as evidence that Trump did bad things.

Will legal troubles allow another Republican to beat Trump in the primary?

Forecasting the primaries is a very difficult problem, because they happen in sequence and what happens in the first ones can have a great impact on the later ones. And, chance can hit the former either way. For now, the conventional wisdom is that legal cases are likely to help Trump and thus hurt his rivals, such as Florida Gov. DeSantis. But if people get the idea that Trump can’t beat Biden, voters may lean toward his rival in the early stage of the primary, and this can create a momentum effect in the presidential race. This isn’t certain, but it is possible, and DeSantis knows it. He is being very careful in what he says. Seeing what happens in the first stage of the primaries will be unusually interesting this time.

Will legal cases spark riots or violence among Trump supporters?

I doubt this will happen, but like most people, I was caught off guard by the events of January 6th. The scene this coming Tuesday in New York, when Trump turns himself in to the police, will probably be wild! But the New York City Police Department is very professional and has a lot of experience dealing with riots. However, Trump will encourage his supporters to make him a TV and newspaper zany.

Will Trump go to jail?

Most legal scholars think the case in New York is weak, highly technical and unlikely to lead to a conviction. In the worst case, a fine could be imposed. So this is mostly a political circus. There are two other cases that are much more serious. One involves the classified documents that Trump illegally took from the White House. The felony is not that he did it, but that he later tried to cover it up and undermine the investigation. But even more serious is the case in Georgia, where there is a telephone recording of Trump apparently urging an election official to commit voter fraud and steal the election. That seems like the worst case of all. Even if Trump is convicted in one or both of these cases, he can still run and could still win the Republican primary, even from jail. Personally, I think a little peace and quiet would be good in American politics, but we’re unlikely to get it.