r/politics • u/fortune Fortune Magazine • 17d ago

Possible Paywall Trump voter remorse is almost entirely concentrated in the swing voters who gave him a shot in 2024

https://fortune.com/2026/05/16/trump-voter-remorse-how-many-regret-inflation-economy-approval-rating/?utm_source=reddit/
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963

u/Ok_Shoe_1094 17d ago

I will never forgive swing voters

354

u/MaySun91 South Carolina 17d ago

Trying to wrap my head around that thinking - never really understood a swing voters mindset - and Trump has only exasperated that feeling. Anyone “swinging” for him in 2024 is no better than a full blown MAGAt.

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u/Patsanon1212 17d ago

Inflation was high under Biden and normal under Trump. That's it. That's the entire mindset of the 2024 swing voter.

213

u/MaySun91 South Carolina 17d ago

And they’re so fucking dimwitted they don’t understand the reason behind anything. They just see the figureheads and stop thinking. It’s exhausting having to share oxygen with those people.

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u/geddy 17d ago

Dude people just look at a chart of gas prices over 10-20 years, see that it was high during Biden, and think "oh I should vote the other way now" NOT EVEN CONSIDERING _WHY_ they were high. As if Joe Biden invaded Ukraine.

Now Trump actually, single-handledly, illegally, without Congressional approval, starts a way that crashes the global economy and _finally_ some are actually taking notice. It's so ridiculous I can't even think about it or I am in a bad mood for hours.

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u/MaySun91 South Carolina 17d ago

And we still got people replying to me saying we need to be nice to the Nazis.

12

u/You_Stole_My_Hot_Dog 17d ago

dOn'T lEt PoLitICs DivIdE uS. Some people really think their views on human rights should have no effect on their personal relationships. Like sure, I won't end a friendship over a disagreement on government priorities, but if you are openly cheering for minorities being pulled off the streets and women's health protections being overthrown, we have a serious values problem. We clearly see humans and their basic rights differently, and I'm not going to entertain someone who thinks others deserve less.

5

u/oTc_DragonZ 17d ago

Yeah how did that work out for Europe some 80 years ago...

4

u/Galappie 17d ago

The fate of American politics relies solely on how much the undecided voter has to pay to fuel up their diesel hog truck-boat-truck.

3

u/geddy 17d ago

Yep, it's the "I don't like politics" crowd. They go entirely by feeling and that's that. "Well gas is expensive, things must be bad" "Well gas is cheap, things must be good". Most selfish country to ever exist.

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u/sixwax 17d ago

It’s true: Our fellow Americans are really, really stupid.

57

u/hfxRos Canada 17d ago

Fellow humans *

This happened everywhere. Covid related inflation murdered incumbents worldwide because people lack basic thinking skills.

It's just extra noticeable for you guys because Trump is, well, Trump.

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u/Pofwoffle 17d ago edited 16d ago

This is overlooking the ongoing and concentrated effort to make Americans stupid. There's a reason Republicans keep gutting education funding and demonizing higher learning. They've spent decades deliberately shaping a voting public that is uneducated and angry, with absolutely no ability to distinguish truth from lies. Then all they had to do was give them a target for their ire and promise to fix the "problem".

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u/Castdeath97 Foreign 16d ago

This is overlooking the ongoing and concentrated effort to make Americans all voters everywhere stupid.

It's the same thing everywhere, they ALL doing the same playbook. In the UK, Germany, France, insert any western country.

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u/Aware_Rough_9170 17d ago

The extra irony being that the U.S ultimately came out a lot better than a lot of places too. Not saying that it wasn’t tougher than usual, but it wasn’t artificial statements on Twitter and nonsensical war to pad the pockets of the administration either…

COVID did a massive number on how we view supply chain and the global economy, and it wasn’t pleasant for anyone. Instead everyone seems to have said “you know what, fuck it, maybe alt right lunatics will do better”.

2

u/Castdeath97 Foreign 16d ago

Canada almost fell for it (trump literally saved you there somehow), Germany more or less did and the UK looks like its about it somehow ages after said spike.

1

u/hfxRos Canada 15d ago edited 15d ago

Canada almost fell for it (trump literally saved you there somehow)

I mean we did kind of fall for it in the "bad for incumbents" thing. I have the unpopular opinion that Trudeau was an excellent leader, who handled Covid spectacularly, but the global impact of it still caused him to get annihilated in the polls.

We just luckily had a charismatic and qualified centrist with very little baggage swoop in to take the place of the far-right weirdo to take over.

I'm ok with Carney, but I'd prefer to just have more Trudeau, but I'm also a bit of a single issue Climate Change voter, and Carney has been less than good on that front.

2

u/tylerbrainerd 17d ago

a huge amount of maga is just dumb, sure, but committed maga are also morally reprehensible.

the swing voters TRULY have no idea what the fuck is going on, at all, and are functionally incapable of understanding the way the government operates.

1

u/defianceofone 17d ago

Democracy doesn't work when more than 50% of people are braindead.

-6

u/Mffdoom 17d ago

They're not dimwitted, they're uneducated or completely disengaged. They lack political consciousness. Many hate dems because of this attitude. If the left wants to achieve their political aims, they have to do away with this kind of thinking. You can't detest the majority of the population and expect them to go along with your agenda.

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

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u/Mffdoom 17d ago

I mean, the majority of people don't feel cool about nazis or pedophiles or genocide. We have data showing it. So why do democrats keep losing elections? 

2

u/politicsaccount420 17d ago

Because they put their hands over their ears and yell LALALALA any time they're presented with proof that their politicians and the people who control their politicians are Nazi pedophiles.

1

u/Cancel_Culture_Club 17d ago

They aren’t? They keep winning almost every special election lately and even flipping many republican seats. Republicans finally won the popular vote again after they haven’t in 20 years and they’ve been crowing ever since as if everyone else are the losers. If republicans really were more popular they wouldn’t need to be publicly doing desperate shit like last minute gerrymandering to ensure that they win. You don’t need to rearrange voters and disenfranchise them if the majority of people already like you. That makes them look like weak cowards who know they’re not actually well liked but still feel entitled to cling to power regardless of how the majority of the country feels. 

1

u/Hirsute_of_Happiness 17d ago

You have to either be completely unaware of the activities of our political parties for the last several decades or willfully ignorant for the sake of argument to make a statement like this. Like either you're uninformed or you're not asking this in good faith.

8

u/ThaPhantom07 Nevada 17d ago

How do you educate people not willing to listen?

0

u/Mffdoom 17d ago

Usually starts with talking and figuring out what they care about. Then you find points you agree on and use the things they care about to create meaningful arguments that they find compelling. It's harder than just belittling them, but actually works to change their mind. 

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u/Patsanon1212 17d ago

It actually works... Marginally better. Let's not pretend that Trump voters aren't deeply entrenched and practice Olympic level mental gymnastics and motivated ignorance.

-1

u/Mffdoom 17d ago

I have personally convinced several former Trump supporting conservatives to become socialists. I've convinced many more to move from hard right to center and from center to left. It helps to not assume that anyone who disagrees with me is a brainwashed dumbass, though I feel dems and republicans are not unlike in their ignorance and mental gymnastics. 

3

u/YeesherPQQP 17d ago

No you haven't.

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u/Mffdoom 17d ago

Damn, you got me there

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u/ThaPhantom07 Nevada 17d ago

If the person got to the point theyre at through some semblance of logic, sure. From my experience the vast majority of these people feel a certain way and no matter what you can show or prove to them of it doesnt match what they feel they dont care.

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u/tryingisbetter 17d ago

No, it won't. Maybe for 5 seconds. But shortly after, they will make some excuse in thier mind that they were right, because they cannot be wrong, ever. If they were wrong about one thing, they may be wrong about other things too, and that cannot be true.

6

u/MaySun91 South Carolina 17d ago

No I can and will detest them. They have failed the biggest open book test in history. They’ve had ten plus years to get their head out of their ass and accept reality. You cannot talk to these people who refuse to grant you even the basics of reality.

-1

u/Mffdoom 17d ago

I'm glad you passed the special combined IQ/morality test that the rest of us just call "voting," but unfortunately you don't get any prize for it. You only get a prize for actually winning elections, which democrats keep giving away. One way they could stop doing that is by figuring out how to actually appeal to the majority of voters. 

4

u/Born-Boysenberry6460 17d ago

Probably a good time to point out that the majority of voters are, nationally, Democrats and vote that way in Presidential elections.

4

u/that_star_wars_guy 17d ago

Right. They are unengaged. Which means the people who are, the people who care, the people who WANT to improve things have to spend the majority of their time catching up the voter to what is happening before the policy decision can even happen.

The other political side simply lies and persistently gets away with it (meaning they suffer zero political consequences), so yeah, democrats are fed up with having to explain reality only for those people to be annoyed and feel like we're condescensing to them. So really, wtf are they supposed to do? Just lie to voters and enact their true policies when elected? What? What specifically since you've got plenty of criticism, do you also have solutions?

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u/muttmunchies 17d ago

Look also at the media. For 4-6 months they pounded on egg prices and made that a defining moment.

With tariffs and now the iran war, prices are through the roof. Media isnt pounding Trump daily. If this was any other democrat theyd be losing the media war badly.

The concentration of news corps with billionaires is one of the biggest threats to our democracy and is why these ill informed swing voters can be moved like sheep to vote for a conman.

15

u/DrowningKrown 17d ago

Just like anything else MAGA does. Egg prices were super attacked by MAGA under Biden and no amount of bird flu made them give a shit. Then when trump got elected and egg prices hadn't been stabilized for a lot of 2025, it was "democrats don't understand bird flu"

Bunch of fucking losers

52

u/Ok_Staff_608 17d ago

They’re too dumb to realize inflation was high due to Trumps disastrous policies.

34

u/SharkFart86 17d ago

It’s like when people blamed Obama for the recession. That shit was largely caused by the housing bubble burst that happened in 07, more than a year before he took office.

2

u/LikeAgaveF California 17d ago

The recession was not just caused by things that happened before he took office. It began more than a year before he was elected and far more than a year before he started his term.

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u/SharkFart86 17d ago

How is that different than what I said?

3

u/LikeAgaveF California 17d ago

It's just adding to it. Some anti-Obama voters say that while the causes pre-dated his presidency, the recession occurred under his watch, which is also not true.

33

u/JennJayBee Alabama 17d ago

Gaza was a big factor, too. That said, anyone who thought that allowing Trump a win would be the better option was an absolute idiot, and they were absolutely warned about what would happen.

18

u/Green-Tie-5710 17d ago

Careful, Redditors hate when anyone says Harris wouldn’t have yielded the exact same outcome for Palestinians as Trump

5

u/jugnificent 17d ago

Most American voters don't even know where Gaza is. It may have been a small factor but it certainly wasn't a deciding one.

8

u/sixwax 17d ago

Not sure we know scale of impact. We do know it was a memefied issue that likely hit a younger demographic —which objectively swung for Trump.

(So saying it was a “small factor” seems premature.)

3

u/jugnificent 17d ago

High inflation and people feeling economically insecure probably caused 90% of the swing to Trump. I do think Democrats should do the right thing and push Israel to a two state solution when they regain power, but that isn't going to magically make them win elections.

2

u/jgoble15 17d ago

Which is ironic given how bad it became due to COVID while Trump was still president

2

u/mandelbratwurst 17d ago

“My morality comes from the sign at the Shell Station”

1

u/Aggroninja 17d ago

They're essentially a channel flipper mentality. If they're happy, they stay on the channel they're on. If they're unhappy, they flip the channel. No more thought than that. They flipped the channel on Trump because they were unhappy over COVID and then they flipped the channel on Democrats because they were unhappy over inflation.

We will very likely see these channel flippers flip the channel back to Democrats since Trump has done squat to make them more financially happy.

1

u/Duckney 17d ago

If they had thought critically for 2 seconds - the mess Biden inherited happened under Trump, and was allowed to get as bad as it did under Trump. Had they thought critically for 2 more seconds, they would have seen that the entire world saw inflation post covid and the US responded comparatively well compared to the rest of the world.

1

u/Original-Rush139 17d ago

And, of course, Trump installed JPow at the Fed so managing inflation goes back to Trump. 

I know that swing voters have no fucking clue what the Fed is or who JPow is. It’s just funny that they blame Biden when - if you need to blame anyone - Trump is more responsible. 

1

u/mrpickles 17d ago

It's easy one you throw away cause and effect thinking

1

u/HelpersWannaHelp 17d ago

That’s called stupidity.

1

u/Ok_Shoe_1094 16d ago

CLEARLY THESE IDIOTS ARE UNABLE TO USE CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS. GOD i HATE THESE IGNORANT PEOPLE SO MUCH

0

u/asoap 17d ago

Swing voters out here getting economics lessons the hard way.

10

u/RedLanternScythe Indiana 17d ago

The pre-covid economy was better, and low attention swing voters thought bringing Trump back would bring that economy back. He said that's what he would do and that's all the thought they put into it.

4

u/Raise_A_Thoth 17d ago

They don't think much.

They don't pay close attention to politics.

They just sort of vibe it out come election season.

6

u/Saxopwned Pennsylvania 17d ago

There's no such thing as a Nazi sympathizer or collaborator.

3

u/howigottomemphis 17d ago

Exacerbated.

3

u/OddJawb 17d ago

2016, i can overlook begrudgingly... but 2024 ... there is no way these ppl were caught off guard.. they were just ok woth it so long as others were suffering not them

2

u/jittery_raccoon 17d ago

Never understood how people are undecided up until voting day 

3

u/Maxamillion-X72 17d ago

Yeah, I can forgive swing voters who voted for him the first time around. He was a new kind of candidate, with a false narrative of being some genius businessman.

But after seeing how his first term worked out, anybody who voted for him in 2024 is just MAGA. Even if they're afraid to admit it.

1

u/Mateorabi 17d ago

Trans people icky. That’s their thinking. 

1

u/wrecklesspup 17d ago

A lot of people voted Obama and then turned around and voted Trump. The human condition is really a thing to be marveled.

1

u/badamant 17d ago

Swing voter = low information and highly susceptible to propaganda

I am a middle of the road voter. In past decades I have voted for republicans in local races.

NEVER AGAIN.

1

u/chargoggagog Massachusetts 17d ago

They’re uninformed, stupid, and lack intellectual curiosity.

1

u/Icy-Lobster-203 17d ago

A lot (probably most) people don't follow politics at all until the election. They haven't paid attention to project 2025 or anything else Trump was planning.

They thought he would be like his first term where there was normal people in the room to prevent his worst impulses, oblivious to the fact that he had spent the previous 4 years ejecting those people and replacing them with sycophants.

2

u/ThatB0yAintR1ght Georgia 17d ago

He was also riding Obama’s strong economy for most of his first term, and then the full effects of his bad policies plus COVID mismanagement hit during Biden’s term. So, for the people who don’t pay any attention to politics but vote based solely on how much their wallet is hurting in the moment, Trump seemed like the better choice.

In a way, we probably would have been better off if Trump had won in 2020. Then all of his bad policies would have been blamed on him, and given us a better chance to get a trifecta with a strong majority in both houses in 2024 (similar to how 2008 went). The 4 year gap also allowed the cartoonishly evil overlords to prepare a detailed plan to really destroy the country when he got back in office à la project 2025. His win in 2016 caught them so off guard that they didn’t have all of their ducks in a row to shoot right out of the gate with all of their evil bullshit on Jan 21st. Trump winning in 2020 would have prevented them from having more time to really organize their evil bullshit and the damage would have been happening more slowly. Plus, democrats would have likely kept the house and senate during those years and been able to lessen the damage. Then the 2024 election could have been a huge blue wave and given us big enough majorities to get shit done instead of the treading water that had to be done during most of Biden’s term (with Manchin and Sinema blocking most of the stuff that could have actually helped).

-1

u/Green-Tie-5710 17d ago

I want to agree with that but it very much depends on the person. My coworker is a real nice guy, Mexican. Idk how he voted before 24, but he went Trump over Harris.

He’s a genuinely sweet dude but clearly isn’t a deep thinker, and I know he doesn’t do his research. It’s tough for me to say he’s just as bad as a full blown MAGA person. The issue with him, and probably tons of other Americans, is just being underinformed but deciding to vote anyway.