Will Trump’s shooting change everything? Or surprisingly little?

It didn’t take long after the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump, the killing of one of his rally attendees, and the injury of two others, for the political world’s attention to turn to a crass but undeniably important topic: What will it mean for Trump politically? Among commentators and social media posters, there have basically been two separate instinctive — and conflicting — reactions. The first reaction: This is a political boon for Trump that makes him more likely to win in November. The second reaction: Don’t get too carried away, it may not make much of a difference. Not knowing the future, we can’t really say for sure. But there are somewhat convincing points behind each of them. Here are the arguments being put forward. Will the shooting be a tremendous help to Trump? History is full of examples of leaders who use a near-miss assassination attempt as an excuse to centralize power and crack down on civil liberties. Since Trump is not in office, he can’t do that right now, and the main question is whether it will affect his ability to win. Many (including some vocal Trump critics) believe it will dramatically help his chances for some combination of the following reasons. It will activate the MAGA base: For much of this year, there has been low interest in political news on both sides of the aisle, but there have been questions about whether Trump’s base in particular was less mobilized than they were in years prior. Conservative news sites were seeing dismal traffic numbers and Trump’s campaign was struggling with small-donor fundraising. That began to change after Trump’s criminal conviction on May 30, which unleashed a massive surge in donations to Trump’s campaign that erased Biden’s cash edge. Perhaps the assassination attempt on Trump will be a similar catalyst: a lightning shock of attention that makes his base rally to his side and ensures they’ll turn out at the polls. It could make him win sympathy from— or look tough to — a general electorate: Sometimes, if a leading politician is shot but survives, there is a wave of sympathy and support for them. When President Ronald Reagan was shot (and much more seriously injured) in 1981, his approval increased from about 60 percent to about 68 percent in Gallup polls. For Trump, much digital ink was spilled analyzing the potential political value of photos taken of him just after the shooting, most notably Evan Vucci’s Associated Press photo showing a bloodied Trump raising his fist while the American flag is behind him. His fans opined on social media that it made him look “tough,” with many making the comparison to the 1912 incident when Theodore Roosevelt was shot during a campaign speech and finished his speech. (The comparison is not perfect: Trump did not finish his speech, and Roosevelt lost that election.) It could help him among low-trust voters: Some commentators, like my colleague Eric Levitz, have argued that a major trend in politics is that “voters with low levels of trust in society and the political system are shifting rightward.” Regardless of the facts around the shooting, the conspiracy theories around it will inevitably be twisted to advance the narrative that “they” — Democrats, the media, shadowy powers that be — wanted this to happen and are in some way responsible for it. Some of Trump’s allies are already publicly advancing such arguments; if they resonate, they could further expand the GOP’s emerging advantage among low-trust voters. Or will it not make much of a difference? Often, when pundits are hyping a supposedly game-changing political moment, it’s useful to take a step back and skeptically ask: Will it actually change much of anything? The election is still nearly four months away: It is a long time between now and November 5, 2024. Many other events will consume the news between now and then; just last week, the biggest political story was whether Joe Biden could hold onto the nomination. It is very far from clear that this is the one event that will loom over the rest of a campaign that is still a ways off from concluding. Polling in this race has long been static: Trump and Biden are two very well-known candidates and polling in this race hasn’t moved much throughout the campaign. For instance, Biden’s bad debate — one of the most dramatic events of the cycle — only lowered his standing in national polling averages by about 2 points. It has been very difficult to budge the Trump/Biden polling. As shocking as this event was, the vast majority of voters have long made up their views about Trump and seem quite unlikely to change their minds because of his injury. And if there is a short-term “sympathy bounce” for Trump, it may not last. (Reagan’s approval bounce after he was shot only lasted a few months.) The shooter may not fit easy political narratives: We don’t yet know anything about 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks’s motive for shooting Trump, and conspiracy theorists won’t care too much about the facts. Depending on what we do learn about his background and motivations, arguments blaming Democrats or shadowy power brokers for his actions may not come off as convincing to many voters in the general public. We don’t yet know how Trump will respond Another difficulty in predicting exactly what this will mean is that we don’t yet know exactly how Trump will respond. One could imagine him trying to stay above the fray, sound presidential, and use broadly appealing rhetoric to bring the country together. In reality, he is still Donald Trump, a politician frequently motivated by grievance and revenge. Being who he is, he could well overreach, turning off voters he might have a chance of winning to his side, and convincing them that restoring him to the office would mean yet more turmoil. So nothing is set in stone. The assassination attempt on Trump did not guarantee his victory. It could help his chances. But the campaign will be about more than what happened on Saturday.