Lurid and gripping Daniels' testimony humiliated Trump.Will it turn voters off?

Stormy Daniels may have regarded sex with Donald Trump as brief, unimaginative and regrettable but the adult film star has gripped the US with a salacious and lengthy retelling of the encounter to a New York court this week.

- Chris McGreal

Daniels' humiliating testimony in Trump's fraud trial infuriated the former president who glowered from a few feet away. But her account only went to confirm what most people in the US and beyond already knew about a man widely regarded as a sexual predator and appeared unlikely to change many votes in November's presidential election.

New York state is prosecuting the former president for fraud after he allegedly used his business, the Trump Organization, to pay $130,000 (£103,900) in hush money to Daniels days before the 2016 election. She went public anyway two years later with a book, Full Disclosure, in which she claimed to have had sex with Trump once.

He continues to deny the encounter but opinion polls show most Republicans think he is lying.

They also do not seem to care. Dr Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said many Trump voters may be absorbed by unusually lurid testimony for a fraud trial but he doubted it would make a significant difference to the outcome of the second round of Trump v Joe Biden later in the year.

"When the details about Stormy Daniels finally came out during Trump's presidency, people just instinctively knew it was true. Just like people instinctively knew that Bill Clinton had fooled around because he'd done it so many times before. People are not stupid. But in this era, it doesn't matter much.

"Twenty years ago, Trump wouldn't even be the Republican nominee. Now it doesn't move the needle at all," Sabato said.