The rise of the regretful Trump voter
PHILADELPHIA — In September 2024, Sharita White made a desperate choice. After supporting Democrats in previous presidential election cycles, the 37-year-old Black Philadelphian decided she would cast her ballot for Donald Trump.
Her life during the Biden years had taken a frustrating turn: Her husband had passed away, she’d lost her job, and she was forced to move with her kids to a Philly neighborhood notorious for crime and fentanyl addiction. With a son struggling with a chronic ailment, her tight food budget had been padded by pandemic stimulus checks. With those gone, and high inflation pushing up the cost of living, life felt drastically different.
“When Trump was in the chair, Black people was up. And I want Trump back in the chair because I’ve been struggling ever since he’s been out of the chair,” she told me and Today, Explained producer Miles Bryan last fall in front of a cheesesteak shop where Republican operatives were campaigning for Black voters.
When November came, she joined millions of other Black, Latino, and young voters who broke with Democrats and cast their votes for Trump. Voters like Sharita White — disengaged, historically Democratic, and frustrated with the status quo — powered a historic red shift in Democratic strongholds across the country, helping Trump sweep Electoral College battlegrounds and win the popular vote.
But eight months later, White told us she feels even worse. “I just see things just keep rising and stuff, and things does not look like they’re getting better and stuff,” she said when we caught up with her at her Northeast Philly home in May. “Because at this point, it’s like nothing is getting better. And the economy is getting worse.”
She regrets her vote for Trump. And she’s not alone.
Across a range of polling averages and survey data, a similar picture is developing. Black, Latino, and young voters are turning sharply against him, reversing the gains he made throughout 2024 with traditionally Democratic voting groups.
Trump created a multiracial, working-class, Republican coalition. But just three and a half months into this presidency, that coalition looks like it’s falling apart.
The data shows a steady drift away from Trump among his 2024 coalition
Trump was elected president in no small part because his campaign’s unconventional wager paid........© Vox
