Indictments

 After the 2022 election, it looked like Donald Trump's support in the Republican Party was finally weakening. As Trump made a comeback in the middle of 2023, some people said that one reason for his resurgence was that Republicans were rallying around him because he had been indicted on various charges.  Now this seems to have become conventional wisdom:  a news story in the NY Times says "But far from diminishing the former president’s standing with Republicans, the charges actually rallied the party around him."

A few months ago, I looked for relevant data.  Lots of surveys asked if you had a favorable or unfavorable view of Trump, but I wanted ones that asked for degree of favorability--my idea was that the indictments wouldn't convert people from unfavorable to favorable, but they might make people who were already favorable more strongly committed.  Surveys that ask people for degree of favorability or unfavorability are less common, and I didn't find enough for an analysis.  After the New Hampshire primary, I tried again and found a source I hadn't known about before:  a company called Echelon Insights has monthly polls that include a question about views of Trump (very favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable, and very unfavorable) and breaks them down by party identification.  Very and somewhat favorable ratings of Trump among Republicans:

The first indictment came on March 30, after data collection for the March survey was complete.  There was a lasting increase in very favorable ratings and decline in somewhat favorable ratings starting in April.  Of course, in principle the pattern could be the result of something else that happened at around the same time, but I can't think of any other obvious candidate.  There was no lasting change after the second and third indictments, but it seems reasonable that the first one would have more impact.  

There also has been some polarization of ratings among independents, with both very favorable and very unfavorable ratings becoming more common, but this was a gradual change--there's no sign that the indictments had any special impact.  The latest figures among independents are 17% very favorable and 46% very unfavorable.   For Democrats, very unfavorable ratings have been steady at about 85 percent over the whole time period.