Beyond the breakdown of a 12-member jury panel, the portion of America that will shrug its shoulders at this case’s conclusion means Donald Trump has numbers he can work with, politically. For now, at least.

For his opponents, it will need to – because, in six weeks of a criminal trial, it didn’t.

Trump guilty latest: Ex-US president says he is a ‘very innocent man’

For all the talk of due process having due impact on a presidential campaign, of evidence laid bare to land a political death warrant, the Trump campaign remains alive and kicking.

While this trial has been a thunderous legal watershed for the United States, there are reasons why it has not reverberated as it might, and as Trump’s opponents would have hoped.

It was rather more than the «bookkeeping error» that Trump would have had us believe but there are factors beyond his characterisation that minimise impact.

The prosecutors’ witness list was populated by unsympathetic characters to whom you would not hand your house keys.

They were central to a prosecution case wrapped in a parcel of rogues and it weakened the ‘good versus evil’ narrative that sharpens a public’s response.

There was also the matter of trial fatigue, before it even got underway. The charges, the witness evidence and the response of the accused had all been aired loudly and often over months leading up to the trial itself.

It was a political wall of sound designed to drown out the business of the court on a given day, every day. They were not the headline act in this corner of Lower Manhattan but they were headline enough to influence the story in its telling.

So, what story will America be telling when the dust settles on this, the only criminal trial Donald Trump is likely to face before the November election?

Will voters be discussing Donald Trump? Definitely.

He has already been convicted in civil court of fraud and been found liable for sexual assault. The judge in the sexual assault case called it «rape».