Did Jeffrey Epstein kill himself?
On July 7, the Department of Justice and FBI released a memo concluding that the answer was “yes.” Epstein had no client list, they asserted, and he “died by suicide.”
Recriminations were swift and widespread, with figures across the spectrum — from Joe Rogan to Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz — casting doubt on the finding. Worse, the public didn’t buy the explanation from FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi — our survey showed a broad plurality of the electorate was convinced that Epstein did not kill himself, and that finding wasn’t really stratified by partisanship. (In fact, Trump 2024 voters were actually slightly more likely to believe Epstein was murdered than Harris 2024 voters were.)
Even more strikingly, a shockingly low number of voters were willing to exonerate Trump in all of this. Nearly half of all 2024 voters said that he was involved in Epstein’s crimes, and just 25% of voters said he wasn’t. There’s even some weakness among Republicans here, as only 49% said he wasn’t involved with Epstein. (That’s actually much lower than the share of Republicans willing to clear him of the hush-money crime he was convicted of in a June 2024 survey fielded by YouGov immediately postverdict.)
Through one lens, that’s among the worst possible poll results for Trump in recent memory. A large plurality of the electorate thinks that one of the most famous criminals of our time was murdered in a federal detention center. And to top it off, the public believes that the president is involved in his crimes.
So it’s a bit surprising to see the lack of electoral fallout. On the day of the FBI memo, Trump’s approval sat seven percentage points underwater, according to Nate Silver, with 44.9% approving of his performance as president and 51.5% disapproving. Two months later, both of those numbers are essentially unchanged.
In other words, a lot of voters actually thought Trump was involved, but the intensifying unfavorable news cycles around Epstein still made virtually no dent in his armor. (In fact, Trump’s approval was actually lower at previous points in his presidency, like when record-breaking tariffs were announced on “Liberation Day.”)
The lack of fallout isn’t just limited to Trump and his Teflon nature. Democrats initially sought to use the Epstein files as a wedge issue against Republicans, hitting the GOP on the lack of transparency in the process. So far, however, this effort hasn’t significantly hurt the standing of congressional Republicans either.
How did the public’s view have no electoral impact (so far)? Here’s one explanation: Very few persuadable voters cared in the first place.
This sounds crazy, but the data suggests it’s actually fairly well grounded. In our survey, while a chunk of Democrats were riveted by the Epstein news, this was less true for every other group — and people who didn’t back either Harris or Trump in 2024 were most likely to say they were not following the Epstein news closely.
From this perspective, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the Epstein files didn’t move the needle for Democrats. The most persuadable groups of people tend to be the voters who don’t belong to either partisan tent. But that group is not as gripped by the details as the rest of us — in fact, just 19% of independents and 8% of nonvoters (or third-party voters) even reported that they closely followed the saga. And it’s hard to get people to change their votes on the basis of a matter they don’t really pay attention to.
Is this because Democrats have failed to capture the public’s imagination? If so, it’s certainly not due to a lack of effort, because the party’s leaders have been hammering Trump on Epstein for a while now. House Democrats recently released the image of Trump’s alleged “birthday note” to Epstein, and they have not been shy about it on social media. They have also held press conferences with Epstein’s survivors and have tried a variety of techniques to “force the vote,” including teaming up with Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky. None of it has made a dent so far.
Are these simply ineffective ways for Democrats to be campaigning on the issue? If you listen to social media, the answer would seem to be “yes.” Just go on Bluesky or Twitter, and you can easily find people complaining about feckless Democrats.
But that would also imply that a mass persuasion campaign on the topic could be effective in the first place, and I don’t know how true that is. To begin with, it’s not as if voters are short of places to read up on the Epstein scandal — according to Nate Silver’s research, The New York Times ran nearly 200 stories on him in July alone. Our survey also suggests that in a fuzzy sort of way, a lot of voters already believe that Epstein was murdered and that Trump is guilty of something, so they also don’t need much persuasion either. Instead, I think that voters are choosing not to pay attention to what they see as yet another Trump scandal that doesn’t impact their everyday lives.
That aligns with other research conducted on this topic. As Silver noted, public interest in Epstein was never that high to begin with, especially compared to the topics that have meaningfully damaged Trump, like tariffs. The Beltway was certainly interested, but the same can’t be said for voters, who are laser-focused on things like cost of living, especially given the state of the economy. As horrifying as the implications of the Epstein scandal may be, they’re also still fairly abstract to most people.
When you combine this with the abnormally high number of storms that Trump has already weathered, the lack of impact begins to make some more sense. Something like this might have easily taken down another president, but it’s much harder for a nebulous scandal to damage the businessman who once said he could “stand on Fifth Avenue and shoot someone” and not lose any votes. That’s why our poll suggests that most voters are simply tuning it out.
Unless a new smoking gun emerges that changes the landscape altogether, I don’t expect that to change.
Bleak
Hm, I wonder if pushing the issue could have electoral value beyond persuasion. For example, it’s possible that this whole saga has really decreased enthusiasm for Trump from part of his base, and might reduce their turnout compared to the counterfactual where the Epstein issue didn’t reemerge.
Also though, I think presidents become unpopular gradually through a gradual build up of many negative issues rather than one or two salient issues taking them down. So even if on its own this issue might not do much it still might be part of the recipe to make Trump more unpopular a year from now. It contributes to a general sense of bad vibes around Trump that night gradually pull him down.