Will Trump Get Jail Time? We Looked at Similar Cases to Find Out.

Donald J. Trump faces sentencing on Nov. 26. The election three weeks earlier may determine not only if he returns to the presidency, but if he ends up behind bars.

In November, after voters decide whether to return Donald J. Trump to the White House, the judge who oversaw his criminal trial could send him to jail.

And despite Mr. Trump’s political status, the judge has ample grounds to do so, a New York Times examination of dozens of similar cases shows.

The former president’s unruly behavior at the New York trial makes him a candidate for jail time, as does his felony crime of falsifying business records: Over the past decade in Manhattan, more than a third of these convictions resulted in defendants spending time behind bars, The Times’s examination found. Across New York State, the proportion is even higher — about 42 percent of those convictions led to jail or prison time.

The threat of incarceration magnifies the already enormous stakes of the election: Mr. Trump is running not only to reclaim the presidency, but also to remain a free man. While the daily tumult of the presidential race has somewhat obscured Mr. Trump’s legal woes — he is the first former president to become a felon and still faces other criminal cases — his legal and political fates remain inextricably entwined.

If he wins, Mr. Trump will almost certainly avoid incarceration for at least the next four years thanks to a longstanding federal prohibition, which state authorities are expected to honor, against prosecuting a sitting president. A Trump victory might also short-circuit his sentencing altogether: His lawyers have already persuaded the judge to postpone it until after Election Day, and they will undoubtedly demand an indefinite delay if he becomes the president-elect.