Politifact Would Trump Supporters Vote for Trump Again
President Biden campaigns for California Gov. Gavin Newsom earlier this month. David McNew/Getty Images hide caption
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President Biden campaigns for California Gov. Gavin Newsom earlier this month.
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Many moderate Republicans switched allegiances in last year'due south election and backed Joe Biden because they could not abide iv more years of Donald Trump.
These voters, who swung from backing Trump in 2016 to Biden in 2020, helped make the divergence for Biden in places where the margins were close — often, the suburbs.
And so today, about eight months into Biden's presidency, how do these voters view him?
In a pair of virtual focus groups NPR observed concluding calendar week, featuring more than than a dozen such voters from key states, a picture emerged of disappointment with Biden — simply no regrets that they helped send Trump packing after one term.
Treatment of Afghanistan hurt Biden's credibility
Permit'southward start with the disappointment.
Polls bear witness Biden'due south public approving ratings have taken a hitting in recent months. The voters in these focus groups reflected that slide.
They were worried nigh the spread of the delta variant and how COVID-19 continues to hurt the economy. They were wary of Democrats' large spending plans on infrastructure and other programs, alarmed by the troubles they see along the Texas border, and were very disturbed by the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Transitional islamic state of afghanistan.
"What happened in Afghanistan, to me, was the worst affair that's happened since Saigon." That reference to the 1975 U.Southward. withdrawal from Vietnam came from Paul, who lives in central Pennsylvania. (Nosotros agreed to identify focus group participants by first proper noun only.)
He didn't buy Biden's explanation that Trump ready the exit in motion by committing to a withdrawal of troops in a deal with the Taliban last year.
"He didn't have to stick to the timeframe Trump set up up," Paul asserted, "merely he kept sticking to information technology and sticking to it, and a lot of people died and a lot of people were left backside. So I think that was squarely on him."
Even so, perhaps unlike the pandemic and the economy, Afghanistan may fade from the news over time and, as such, may not affect long-term impressions of Biden as much.
And on the coronavirus, the focus group participants — all vaccinated — mostly gave Biden solid marks. Information technology's clear he benefits from comparisons to his predecessor on that.
"He's definitely been amend than Trump on handling COVID," said Xaveria from the Atlanta area. But she also said the fact that the delta variant is creating such problems ways yous still can't feel really great near how the electric current assistants is doing regarding the pandemic.
Then she added that there'south simply an overall unease that's troubling. "It's just kind of, like, not really trusting what to expect," she said.
As for Biden, she said, "I just put him at, like, the boilerplate. He hasn't washed anything peachy. And outside of Afghanistan, zip awful." But she was clearly hoping for better.
Not thrilled with Biden, but absolutely not missing Trump
These ii focus groups consisted of all Biden voters, but overwhelmingly they nevertheless consider themselves Republicans. They haven't yet left the political party, even though they're disillusioned by Trump'south ongoing presence and the control he still holds.
In dissimilarity to the bulk of Republicans responding to polls, none of these voters falsely believes the 2020 election was stolen.
None said they regret their 2020 vote. And while they may exist disappointed in Biden, they admittedly rule out voting for Trump if he runs for president again.
Former President Donald Trump waves to the oversupply at the end of a rally on Saturday in Perry, Ga. Sean Rayford/Getty Images hide explanation
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Former President Donald Trump waves to the crowd at the finish of a rally on Sabbatum in Perry, Ga.
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Take Christine from the Philadelphia suburbs. Like others in her focus grouping, she said she first voted for Trump because he was a businessman and not a politician.
Just she got far more than than she bargained for. She used edgeless language to describe the onetime president: "I felt like we had this monster in role that was bipolar, up and downwards, irrational, crazy thinking." She called Trump "kittenish," said that "crazy things came out of his oral cavity," and that he was "not expert for the United States."
And subsequently all of that, Christine confessed: "I didn't want to vote for Biden. And I'm going to be honest with you lot, I would have voted for anybody only Trump."
Others in the group blamed Trump for inciting racial tensions, citing how he described participants in a white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Va., as "very fine people."
Every bit for Trump's oft-stated claim that he would "bleed the swamp" in Washington, D.C., focus grouping member Mike, who lives in Georgia, had this retort: "I think he made the swamp bigger."
"It's like, where do we become?"
These swing voters readily say that their frustrations with both a Republican Party in Trump's grasp and with Biden leave them feeling a bit lost politically.
Georgia resident Xaveria asked a elementary question: "Information technology's like, where do we go?"
These voter discussions were function of a series of focus groups that take been organized by longtime political strategist Sarah Longwell, the publisher of The Bulwark website who herself is a Republican who's worked to defeat Trump.
She hears voters similar Xaveria and Christine and says they refuse Trump and GOP candidates trying to be "Trumpy" themselves. She says such voters are open up to voting for Democrats, but the party too needs to nominate more moderate candidates to make these voters feel welcome there.
These moderate-to-bourgeois voters "are very articulate that they experience politically unmoored, politically homeless," Longwell said in an interview.
"I really view these voters every bit up for grabs in 2022 and 2024," she said. But Longwell says it matters who the candidates are and how the parties see themselves.
And Longwell says information technology makes such voters worth watching. It besides makes them potentially pivotal. "Right now, people who are willing to change their vote from one political party to some other really agree the keys to political ability," she said.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2021/09/30/1041252418/they-voted-for-trump-and-then-for-biden-heres-what-these-swing-voters-think-now
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