Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the campaign trail, the White House and Capitol Hill.

In today’s edition, national political reporters Bridget Bowman and Henry J. Gomez explore how Senate candidates in key races are responding to Donald Trump’s guilty verdict. Plus, senior political editor Mark Murray breaks down what we can and can’t lear from the early polls following Trump’s conviction.

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Hush money verdict tests Senate candidates’ approach to Trump

By Bridget Bowman and Henry J. Gomez

Donald Trump’s guilty verdict in his New York hush money case is turning into one of the first major tests for candidates in key down-ballot races trying to navigate the tumult of running alongside the polarizing former president.

Republican candidates across Senate battlegrounds rallied around Trump after a Manhattan jury found him guilty last week on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, with many criticizing the case as “election interference,” “a sham,” “rigged” and “political persecution.”

Yet, while Republicans are rushing to embrace Trump, many Democrats want to focus on their own states and other issues instead of making a meal out of the guilty verdict, facing an uncertain political landscape and the knowledge that they’ll need Trump voters to back them, too, in critical races.

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At least two Republican Senate candidates began running new ads on Monday looking to further leverage the verdict.

In Montana, Republican Tim Sheehy released a new spot saying his likely opponent, Jon Tester, the Democratic incumbent, “supported Joe Biden’s witch hunt every step of the way.” The ad will air on TV, according to a source familiar with the strategy.

In Ohio, Republican Bernie Moreno launched a digital ad that criticizes Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown for “refusing to condemn Biden’s politically motivated witch hunt.”

It’s no coincidence that Moreno and Sheehy are leaning into the verdict to fire up Trump’s supporters in Ohio and Montana. Both states are among Republicans’ best opportunities to flip Senate seats this year, after an open seat in West Virginia — Trump carried Montana by 16 points and Ohio by 8 points in 2020. The GOP needs a net gain of two seats to take control of the chamber (or one seat if Trump wins the White House, since the vice president casts tie-breaking votes in the Senate).

Tester and Brown had similar, muted responses to last week’s verdict.

“I’m not a lawyer or a judge but I’ve said from the beginning that no one is above the law,” Brown said in a statement. “Ultimately this is up to the legal system to sort out and for the American people to decide in November.”

“Senator Tester respects the judicial process and believes everyone should be treated fairly before the courts, and voters will have the opportunity to make their voices heard at the ballot box in November,” a spokesperson told the Montana Free Press.

Read more on how Senate candidates are handling the Trump verdict →

What the first polls after Trump’s conviction show — and don’t show

By Mark Murray

News organizations and pollsters released multiple snap surveys over the weekend to gauge the political landscape after Trump’s conviction. 

Here are three takeaways from what the different national surveys told us — and didn’t tell us — after the historic verdict. 

Majorities agree with the verdict: A CBS News/YouGov poll showed that 57% of adults said the jury in Trump’s trial reached the correct verdict. That finding was backed up by a Morning Consult poll, in which 54% of registered voters said they approved of the verdict, as well as an ABC News/Ipsos survey, in which 50% of adults said the verdict was correct. 

Those results are in line with pre-verdict national polls, which consistently showed slight majorities saying that the charges against Trump were serious, and that he was being held to the same standard as anyone else accused of those crimes. 

Republicans remain firmly behind Trump: The headline of a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Saturday stated that 1 in 10 Republicans said they are less likely to vote for Trump after the verdict. But a fair warning: Those voters are in the clear minority of their party.

In fact, in the same poll, 55% of Republican voters said the verdict didn’t make a difference to their vote, and 34% said it made them more likely to vote for Trump.

What’s more, the 1 in 10 GOP voters who said they were less likely to vote for Trump were nearly identical to what an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found before the verdict. That survey, conducted May 21-23, showed that 10% of Republicans said they would be less likely to vote for Trump if he was convicted, 25% said they would be more likely and 68% said it would make no difference. 

Make no mistake: Even a sliver of Republicans defecting from Trump could be decisive five months from now. But the major takeaway — right now — is how 9 in 10 Republicans are standing behind him in the Reuters/Ipsos poll.  

The overall political environment hasn’t changed much: This might be the biggest conclusion so far from the early post-conviction polls. Two of the polls — Reuters/Ipsos and Morning Consult — released the results of the race between President Joe Biden and Trump after the verdict. While the movement in each was in Biden’s direction, it was within the margin of error and looked like other national surveys we’ve seen before the verdict.

Reuters/Ipsos poll of registered voters: Biden 41%, Trump 39% (compared to Biden 40%, Trump 40% previously).

Morning Consult poll of registered voters: Biden 45%, Trump 44% (compared to Trump 44%, Biden 42% previously). 

In addition, the ABC News/Ipsos poll found the favorability ratings for Trump and Biden to be essentially unchanged from an earlier survey in March. 

A permanent 2- or 3-point shift to Biden could also be decisive come November. Still, national polls showing 41% vs. 39% or 44% vs. 42% results don’t tell us who’s going to win — and only suggest that the race is close (especially under the Electoral College system). Plus, Trump’s guilty verdict is unlikely to be the last major twist in the 2024 presidential election. 

Read more takeaways from the post-Trump verdict polls →

That’s all from The Politics Desk for now. If you have feedback — likes or dislikes — email us at politicsnewsletter@nbcuni.com

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