A new survey finds that 18 percent of voters who supported Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election now say they regret their vote.
Many of these voters come from groups that swung toward Republicans in the last election, including young people, Black and Hispanic voters, and moms.
What drove these voters to change their mind about Trump? And how much could this shift benefit Democrats in this fall’s midterms?
Tina Tang, Director of Polling and Analytics for Navigator Research, explains that while affordability and the economy are the top concerns of these “Trump regretters,” they don’t trust either party to deliver.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity. The full interview is available at Spotify, YouTube, and iTunes.
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Anne Kim: How important are these “Trump regretters”? Are they a big enough bloc to make the difference this fall in some key races?
Tina Tang: We saw that nearly half the people who said that they regret voting for Trump would want to go back and change their vote if they could. So if you look at the total electorate of Trump voters, that’s about one in ten Trump voters. That’s a significant bloc of folks.
We’ve been tracking over the last year or so how this Trump regret number has changed, and we’ve seen consistently it’s about one in five people that are continuing to regret their vote.
Anne Kim: So who are these Trump regretters then? What share of them are loosely connected to the Republican Party, and what share of them are people like Marjorie Taylor Greene—i.e., die-hard MAGA people who became disillusioned.
Tina Tang: This was the most fun part for me, digging into this survey. So there were a lot of think pieces that came out after 2024 about the growing share of young Americans that are throwing their support behind Trump. And we saw that about 30 percent of 18 to 34-year-olds who voted for Trump in 2024 now regret their vote. This is, I believe, triple the number of folks who are over 55, and about double the folks who are in the 35 to 54 range. We also saw a pretty large number of black and Latino American—about one in three—compared to just about 16 percent of white Americans. We also saw that about a quarter of independents and non-MAGA Republicans now regret their vote. And this is especially high for independent men—around 37 percent. That’s obviously a key part of the Trump coalition all the time. And then we also saw that about 22 percent of moms now regret their vote compared to just about 11 percent of dads. That was one of the more interesting points that for me when I was digging into the data.
Anne Kim: That’s super interesting. It probably ties into the fraying of the MAHA coalition that people are also talking about. Did you see much movement among the folks who identify themselves as MAGA? I’m assuming that that percentage is small, but I’m wondering if it’s meaningful.
Tina Tang: We didn’t see meaningful movement in terms of the base MAGA coalition. But I think what is important is looking at the independents and the non-MAGA coalition. These are folks who aren’t completely sold on the MAGA vision and now, because of the war, because of rising costs, are starting to that maybe they didn’t make the right choice.
The other piece that we hear a lot from Trump regretters, especially from non-MAGA and independents in our focus groups, is this feeling of feeling “duped.” I hear that word come up all the time. “I thought I voted for lower costs, and I thought I voted for somebody to fix inflation, and I thought I voted for somebody to not start any more new wars.” One quote that has always stood out to me is someone who told us earlier this year that they voted for no new wars, and now Trump is starting wars both abroad and in America.
Anne Kim: Another thing that really jumps out from your survey is that these Trump regretters have not only soured on Trump, they’ve really, really soured on him even compared to the overall population. It seems they’re super negative about the economy and especially about their own finances. And I wonder if you could give a few more details about that.
Tina Tang: [Among] the folks who are regretting their vote for Trump, one of the top reasons they cite is cost. They’re more likely than Americans overall to feel like their personal finances are not in a good place. They’re also more likely than Americans overall to feel that the economy is worse off now than it has been before, and that Trump is not doing a good job on a range of cost issues from gas costs to grocery costs to health care costs.
Anne Kim: I’m curious about whether these very negative perceptions are the result of what’s happened relative to their expectations versus an absolute change in their circumstances. I know that that’s not what your survey looked at, but I am of curious to know if these voters are more low income than other folks or who maybe have been personally injured by what’s been happening with Medicaid or other safety net programs.
Tina Tang: We don’t look at that specifically in our survey, but I think one of the things that really does stand out is the fact that these folks are feeling extremely negatively about their personal financial situations. Earlier this year we did a survey where we looked at people who are changing their habits because of financial circumstances, and we found that nearly one in ten Americans are selling blood plasma to make ends meet.
Anne Kim: Wow.
Tina Tang: While that’s not part of the same data set, that is just one statistic to show how dire financial situations are.
People are feeling like they were promised better, and now they can’t achieve their version of the American Dream because of the current administration.
Anne Kim: Let’s move to the more cautionary phase of this discussion. Democrats hearing this may think, wow, this is really going to be changing the fortunes of the party. But I think one of the interesting things you found in your survey is that the issues that are most outraging to a lot of Democrats and many progressives are not the top reasons cited by Trump regretters about why they regret their vote, such as what’s happening on immigration, or Trump’s mental capacity to serve.
What does that tell you about who these voters are and the caution that Democrats should have about making any assumptions that Trump regretters share their outrage about what’s happening with ICE, or with corruption, or so many other things that, you know, animate the folks on Blue Sky?
Tina Tang: One of the biggest things I would ask folks to remember is that we have to talk about things that are part of people’s lived everyday experiences. People don’t wake up every morning and go on Twitter to see what Trump might have said that day, and they don’t wake up every morning or go to bed at night thinking about know Trump said this, or he’s not mentally well.
They’re going to bed thinking, “How do I put food on the table? How do I provide for my kids? How do I provide for my parents?” People are taking care of their families, taking care of their communities. We have to talk about the things that are impacting their day-to-day, and costs are by far the number one thing we hear people talk about as their biggest worry every day.
One of our favorite tracking questions is to ask Americans what they want the president and Congress to focus on, and then we ask what they think Trump and Republicans in Congress are focused on. We often see this big gap in focus because what they want their leaders to focus on is things like inflation, the cost of living, jobs, economy, health care. And what they think the current administration is spending their time on is things like foreign conflicts and immigration.
Anne Kim: That question, however, also asked respondents what they thought Democrats were focusing on, and there appeared to be a significant disconnect there as well, as I recall. It looked as if voters perceived Democrats to be focusing more on culture war stuff than on the issues they’re concerned about, if I remember correctly.
Tina Tang: We do often see that reflected in our data as well. Some of the things that they perceive Democrats to be focused on are some of the more culture war stuff that you mentioned, but also things like health care. I think Democrats have staked a strong position on health care over the last several years or decades, and that has continued to be something that people associate with Democrats. I think it’s a strong lane for Democrats to continue to message on.
One piece of the cautionary tale of our data is a lot of these voters, and we’ve been talking about Trump regretters specifically, don’t really trust either party to handle a range of different issues.
So I think the cautionary tale coming out of this is that just because they regret voting for Trump doesn’t mean that they automatically trust Democrats more to handle cost issues or health care. A majority of them don’t trust either party. They just think their leaders don’t get it. And we hear this in focus groups all the time, that they feel like their elected leaders just don’t understand where they’re coming from.
Anne Kim: One thing that was disappointing to me is to see that neither party is trusted on the issue of corruption. And that was surprising to me because that is an issue that a lot of Democrats have been bringing up. And it is one of the things that you would think that people would be especially outraged about, especially when there is an outrage a day about various conflicts of interest or corruption or self-dealing. But especially with the Trump regretters, that issue ranked low in the hierarchy of concerns.
Tina Tang: In our data we saw that about 65 percent don’t trust either party on corruption issues. For Americans overall, corruption is usually in the top five issues that people want their leaders to focus on, so it’s high on the list, but behind things like cost of living and health care, which we tend to see always ranked number one and two.
Some of our most recent polling showed that voters are seeing the cost of corruption. One of the things that we hear a lot in focus groups is that people, unprompted, would bring up the ballroom all the time.
People would say, “I can’t put food on the table, but they’re building this giant ballroom. I’m never going to get to go to the ballroom, so what does this do for me as an American?” We hear a lot about the ballroom, the arch, all of these things that are happening in D.C., the vanity projects. I think that’s the best angle to talk about corruption issues.
Anne Kim: If you were to give advice to Democrats, how would you go about reaching disaffected Trump voters, especially since your survey also found that a lot of them intend to continue voting for Republicans?
Tina Tang: We do a lot of research on news consumption at Navigator—how folks are getting their news—and something that was interesting about the Trump regretter group is that they tended to be more active news consumers than Americans overall.
These are folks who are going out and getting informed and actively seeking out information about Trump and his policies.
How best to communicate to these voters is to be in the spaces that they are. These are folks who are actively seeking out more political news. So [Democrats] have to be there to provide the information, whether it’s on health care, whether it’s on the economy, whether it’s the fact that all the tariffs that have been happening recently with Canada are going to raise people’s costs. I think these are things that Trump regretters are following.
