Two years ago, six White suburban mothers were among the more than 77 million Americans who voted to put President Donald Trump back in the White House. Now, they say they regret it.
In a recent focus group convened by Navigator Research, a Democratic polling and public opinion firm, and shared exclusively with The 19th, the six Trump voters discussed their disappointment with his second term — and their mixed feelings about the upcoming midterm elections. Navigator shared the group with The 19th on the condition that the participants be referred to only by their first names to protect their privacy.
Chrissy, a 44-year-old woman from Michigan, said that two years ago, she was “lazy” in basing her vote on political ads and discussions with others instead of her own research.
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Now, she’s committed to voting for candidates who will check Trump.
“He’s pushed the country into an authoritarian playbook,” she said. “And if we don’t do something to stop it right now, it’s unlikely that there’ll be much left.”
Trump is also losing women who were once among his most committed backers.
“I was a die-hard supporter, but it’s been a complete backstab since, pretty much, the storming of the Capitol for me,” said Kristen, a 39-year-old woman in Ohio. “That’s when my opinion really started changing about how he is as a leader.”
Nicole, a 47-year-old in Texas, could relate. She believes Trump “might have his intentions in the right place,” but his second term hasn’t matched his campaign promises. She knows people struggling to afford groceries and turning to public assistance programs to make ends meet, and she thinks things “will get worse before they get better.”
“I just feel we’re drowning, and it only started when Trump got in office,” she said. “I was fully, like she said, a die-hard fan of Trump. I mean, flag supporter, everything. Now I feel like I regret voting for him, I’ll just be honest.”
Melissa Toufanian, a managing director at Navigator, said their research has found that 1 in 4 people who voted for Trump in 2024 now regret it. Moms are more likely to regret their votes than dads — and suburban women are a critical election demographic for both parties.
While all the focus group participants have soured on Trump, they aren’t all sold on Democrats. Several expressed deep disillusionment with politics and doubted their votes could meaningfully change what they see as a broken status quo upheld by both political parties.
“I do think in a lot of ways that our voice doesn’t matter anymore,” said Gayle, a 47-year-old in Florida. “I think Congress sucks, honestly. I just think it sucks. I don’t think that they’re in it for the people. I think they’re in it for themselves these days, and it’s really on both sides.”
The cost of living consistently ranks as voters’ top concern, and many Democratic candidates are putting affordability front and center in their campaigns. Polling from The 19th and YouGov found that women are more worried than men about paying for groceries, healthcare, housing and retirement.
Even women who weren’t as personally affected by rising prices saw the war in Iran and the resulting increase in gas and fuel prices as a clear about-face from Trump’s 2024 campaign promises to lower costs.
“I’m not struggling, but so many people are,” said Denise, a 49-year-old woman from Ohio. “I’m repulsed about the tariffs that we’ve put on our neighbor in Canada, the war, basically picking on other countries and just starting a war for no reason.”
Of the entire group, Gayle had the most positive assessment of Trump’s second term and the economy. But she said she regretted voting for him because of the war in Iran, which “really messed things up.”
“If you’re looking at the gas prices versus if I’m going to see a nuclear bomb happen, I’m more concerned with my gas prices than I am with the nuclear bomb, to be honest,” she said.
And it wasn’t just the economy that made the women in the focus group turn against Trump.
Denise pointed to Trump “taking down history because he’s a narcissist” in tearing down the East Wing of the White House to build a new ballroom.
“It just … that disgusts me,” she said. “He had no right to do that, and that’s one of the big things that pissed me off.”
Women in the focus group said that while they supported enforcing immigration laws and securing the border, they thought the government had gone too far.
“I’m not against the deportation, I’m against inhumane treatment in that process,” said Kristen, the 39-year-old in Ohio.
Brandy, a 43-year-old woman in North Carolina, said she was particularly troubled by federal immigration officials killing two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, in Minnesota. She said when she posted about Good’s killing on Facebook, she was attacked by her friends who are “extreme Trump lovers.”
“He just makes people lose their human decency,” she said.
And they didn’t view other members of the Trump administration much more favorably. They used words like “terrible,” “compromised,” “Trump’s twin,” and “corrupt” to describe Vice President JD Vance. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was called “a liar,” and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “uneducated.” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth “should have stayed on TV,” Kristen said.
But despite the group’s collective distaste for Trump and his inner circle, not all plan to vote for Democrats down the ballot in November.
Denise in Ohio said she was leaning toward voting for Democrat Amy Acton in Ohio’s race for governor over Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, whom she described as “up [Trump’s] rear end,” while Gayle in Florida said she planned to vote for the Republican, Rep. Byron Donalds, in her state’s gubernatorial race.
Brandy said she didn’t like former Gov. Roy Cooper, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in North Carolina, but was voting for him because of GOP nominee Michael Whatley’s ties to a convicted sex offender who served in several leadership positions in the state Republican Party, something Democratic groups have spent millions highlighting in campaign ads.
“I’m gonna go for the guy that doesn’t have a buddy that’s a sex offender,” she said. “Even though I don’t like him, he is the lesser of two evils.”
Toufanian said Democrats have a big opportunity to focus on issues suburban women care about “and to really make some tangible improvements in their lives.”
Food quality and safety is one of those issues. Nearly all the women cited it as a top concern, but only two had heard of the acronym MAHA, or Make America Healthy Again.
“I think there’s a real opportunity because it touches on so many of the other issues that are so important in this election cycle, particularly corruption and affordability,” Toufanian said.
Most women in the focus group said they’re taking a wait-and-see approach to the 2028 presidential race. Two, Chrissy and Kristen, said they were open to voting for a Democrat but wouldn’t want to vote for Vance or former Vice President Kamala Harris, the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee.
Chrissy said she’d primarily evaluate Republican candidates on whether they would further the “cruelty” and “highly polarized” atmosphere cultivated by Trump.
“I don’t want the country to be identified like that anymore, at all. I don’t even want to be a member. … I don’t want to be a citizen of this country,” she said. “I’m embarrassed on a world stage.”
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