In proceedings that are sure to be watched by a lot — like, a lot, Donald Trump is now slated to stand trial in his criminal case in Manhattan in March of next year, absent some other major intervention. The date, March 25, will be right in the middle of the months-long process of voting in the major parties’ presidential primaries before the general election in November, threatening Trump’s opportunities to campaign.
Though Trump has consistently led main challenger Ron DeSantis in polls, it’s still not an actually confirmed thing that Donald will nab the nomination from the GOP. Anything can happen! According to the weighted average maintained by the elections data and analysis site FiveThirtyEight, Trump has mostly seen somewhere around 54 percent of Republicans’ support lately — though these figures are on the national level, and presidential nominations aren’t decided nationally. It’s state by state.
The late March date for Trump’s trial, which will cover allegations of falsifying business records, will likely come after key flashpoints in the primaries, though. What’s known as Super Tuesday, which is a date when essentially a whole lot of states have their primary elections at once, normally comes earlier, and the sudden influx of votes can often give a good barometer of where the presidential nomination races will be eventually going.
DeSantis has sometimes seen leads over Trump in polls of individual states, including a recent survey from his own state of Florida that put him a point ahead of Donald — when it was just the two of them presented to survey participants. It’s possible and wouldn’t be without precedent if the race quickly narrows to those two major contenders, but alternatives remain, since others, like Nikki Haley and Asa Hutchinson, have announced their own campaigns, very low poll numbers notwithstanding. Tim Scott, a Republican Senator from South Carolina, also recently announced a campaign. None of these people are coming anywhere remotely close to Trump and DeSantis across essentially all polls.
