How will the second Trump assassination attempt affect the US election?

When Donald Trump emerged, bloodied and still belligerent from July’s assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, many thought that was it: the White House was now his.

Indeed, speaking on their The Rest is Politics USpodcast last week, Trump’s short-lived Director of Communications Anthony Scaramucci and British journalist Katy Kay admitted: “We sat there in July, looked at each other and said, this is going to change the election.

“That picture of him is going to ascend him to the presidency.”

And yet, Scaramucci went on, they “both got it wrong”: “It had virtually no impact on the polling. It had virtually no impact on anything.”

Now, following a second attack on the Republican nominee’s life at his golf course in Palm Beach, commentators are asking yet again whether this will have any sway on the 2024 US election.

After all, it gave Trump a renewed platform on which to portray himself as a martyr and tell his followers, in an email sent on Sunday: “Nothing will slow me down. I will NEVER SURRENDER.’

His campaign also seized on the opportunity to ask for more money in a separate message sent out to supporters.

And yet, a lot has changed in the two months since the Butler attack, and that iconic image of Trump pumping his fist beneath an American flag has largely lost its impact.

Trump raised his fist in defiance following the July shooting(AP)

To begin with, back in July, Joe Biden was still his opponent in the presidential race. And, just days before, the rivals had gone head-to-head in a debate that is now viewed as the final nail in Biden’s proverbial coffin.

Just a week after the shooting, the president announced he would be backing out of the contest and would be replaced by his vice president, Kamala Harris.

Since then, Harris has risen in the polls. And yet, the race remains too close to call despite the democrat’s success in her own face-off with the MAGA commander-in-chief.

Ultimately, it seems as though none of these seemingly “big” moments has much influence on people’s already-set opinions.

For example, it is worth noting that whilst previous presidents who survived assassination attempts enjoyed a temporary boost in voter approval, this didn’t last.

In 1975, Gerald Ford was targeted in two separate attacks in the space of 17 days. In the first, the gunman failed to discharge a shot, and in the second, they missed with two bullets.

Ford, like Trump, boldly declared that he wouldn’t hide away from public appearances – a stance which saw his approval rating rise by around two points. However, within a month it had fallen to below the pre-assassination attempt level and he failed to win re-election a year later, as The Timesnotes.

Then, in 1981, just a month into his presidency, Ronald Reagan was almost killed by a gunman as he left the Hilton hotel in Washington DC. His ratings surged by around eight points on average over the following couple of months, but they soon began to drop again as the US fell back into recession.

Ultimately, experts and commentators will be closely monitoring the polls over the coming days to see if Sunday’s attempt on Trump’s life has any bearing on the presidential race.

Yet, experience tells us that such events have little lasting impact on the voting intentions of people whose minds are already, broadly, made up.

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