These Trump voters have buyer's remorse

Yahoo Finance polled 25,000 Trump voters in late June, and found that 11% of them say they wouldn’t vote for Trump again, with 6% unsure. A large majority of Trump voters said they would vote for their candidate again – yet Trump seems to be losing the swing voters who put him over the top in last year’s presidential election, as Alexis Christoforous and I discuss in the podcast above.

I interviewed some of those “Trump regretters” to find out why they’ve soured on the candidate they helped put in the White House last November. Some readers ask why we focused on a minority of voters losing faith in Trump, instead of a majority who continue to support him. The answer lies in Trump’s thin margin of victory last November, and even shakier approval ratings now. Trump won the electoral vote last year due to victories in four key swing states – Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan and Wisconsin – where his margin of victory was less than 2%. If Trump has lost that margin – and more, as our poll suggests–it will continue to weaken his political clout, while endangering Republican odds of holding Congress in the 2018 midterms and the White House in the 2020 presidential election.

Some Trump regretters are disappointed the president has engaged in so many petty squabbles that seem to distract him from important business. ““I expected competence,” Fred Wedel, 74, a retired petroleum engineer who lives outside Sacramento, told us. “The only thing I’ve seen is gross incompetence.” Others feel Trump’s policies will harm the working class he promised to help, while cutting taxes for the wealthy. His withdrawal from the Paris climate accord rankles some who voted for him. Others fear they’ll be harmed by GOP efforts to roll back Medicaid or limit healthcare subsidies to lower-income Americans. And some simply can’t abide Trump’s penchant for dishonesty. Alexis and I plumb the issues in the podcast, which we hope you enjoy.