Could Donald Trump’s conviction for sexual assault have consequences for the 2024 presidential election in the United States?

This conviction is unprecedented. Even Bill Clinton, in the case which opposed him to Monica Lewinsky at the end of the 1990s, had not been convicted since the Senate had acquitted him of the charges and the impeachment of the president had not been vote. This time, Donald Trump, who hopes to regain the White House in 2024, was found responsible for a sexual assault and sentenced on Tuesday May 9 to pay five million dollars in damages to former journalist E. Jean Carroll.

>> Who is E. Jean Carroll, the woman who won a court victory against Donald Trump?

Donald Trump was sentenced in civil proceedings, but he is not criminally guilty because of the age of the facts, the case dating back to 1996. It is therefore a case between two people which was judged, d ‘where the conviction of five million dollars.

Mobilize both pro-Trump and anti-Trump

This condemnation may nevertheless have an impact on part of the female electorate, even if the consequences are likely to be rather marginal. You have to keep in mind that Donald Trump is very divisive. It already divides America in two, so if there were to be a consequence at the time of the election, it would be to mobilize each camp, explain the specialists of the United States. Trump opponents may vote more, but so will Trump supporters.

>> US Presidential 2024: who are the declared or expected candidates against Donald Trump and Joe Biden?

Before the American presidential election of 2024, there will be the appointment of the primaries. Can this judgment suit his main rival, Florida Governor Ron de Santis? Here again we must be careful: at present, Donald Trump maintains a lead in the Republican camp over De Santis. At the annual high mass of American conservatives gathered in Washington last March, Trump declared that he had won the convention’s opinion poll among Republican leaders, with 62% of the vote, far ahead of his rival Ron De Santis, who won only 20% of the vote. We know that the primaries mobilize above all the most radical, therefore potentially the supporters of the former president.

Other ongoing cases

Donald Trump is not done with business, in particular for tax evasion, but also for his possible responsibility in the assault on the Capitol in January 2021, not to mention his intervention in the results of the elections in the state of Georgia in 2020 It is therefore the accumulation of all these cases which could, on arrival, discredit him in his camp.