'We were lied to': Swing voters abandon Trump as 3 issues spark a crisis

Sarah K. Burris
4h
People attend a town hall meeting for constituents held by Democratic U.S. Senator Andy Kim at Teamsters Local 331 Hall in Egg Harbor City, New Jersey, U.S. March 20, 2025.

Veteran Republican pollster and Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell said that, for the most part, swing voters couldn't care less about the plague of scandals coming from President Donald Trump's administration. Recently, that has changed, however.

"When we do these focus groups, there are three issues that are consistently driving swing voters away from Trump and the GOP," Longwell wrote on Tuesday for The Bulwark.

The first on the list is the affordability crisis and all the economic issues that go along with it, from housing costs to low wages that don't keep up with inflation, to gas, groceries, and more. Before the economy took a turn, people were content to go on with their lives. Now, everything matters and voters are keeping an eye on every detail.

One Arizona swing voter that Longwell recalled chatting with in 2023 said he would “put up with [Trump’s] bull ---- and just turn off CNN and Fox for the next four years after that." This was largely because he assumed Trump would improve the economy as was promised.

"I go to Dollar Tree a lot with my family," said a Biden-to-Trump voter from Pennsylvania named John. "Well, it became $1.25, then it became $1.50, then it became $1.75. So the fact of the matter is I think the days of seeing things at a dollar there are over, and I just think he would do himself a big favor if he went out and said, ‘We are really working hard on lowering prices like we did with eggs.’ . . . You know, we have to grow the economy and get people to understand that maybe there’s a new normal."

Thomas, who lives in Texas, voted for Trump in 2024, but now he's furious with the president's performance in office.

"The tariffs are a bad idea. I think that the Wall Street Journal had an article today, if you know the right people and have the right lobbyists, you can get you an exemption for your area and, you know, there’s a lot of people doing that, particularly in the tech space," he said.

When former President Barack Obama became president in 2009, the economy was experiencing what former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke called “the worst financial crisis in global history, including the Great Depression." When he handed Trump the presidency in 2017, things were going well. When Trump left in 2021, the economy was in a global collapse. It took years to claw back from that. Now things are worse again.

The second issue that is angering voters is the failed war with Iran.

Samantha, a Wisconsin voter who switched from Biden to Trump in 2024, commented shortly after the election that the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East were a problem for her.

“I’m not really a fan of the wars and everything that has been started, and even the side that America has taken as it relates to some of the wars. So he will definitely do something different there," she said of Trump.

How quickly that changed. Trump claimed he could end the war between Russia and Ukraine before he even took office. It's still going, and the U.S. is now in a quagmire in Iran.

One Biden-to-Trump voter from Ohio told Longwell in March, “I don’t feel we can be sure it’s . . . only gonna be fifty days. I think that’s the whole problem is we don’t know, can we trust this administration that that’s gonna be true?”

The 50 days he referenced came from a promise Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made that gas prices would go down after 50 days. That was 167 days ago.

The third major issue is corruption. Longwell called it a "surprise" to see just how angry voters are about the Trump grifting that has only grown worse in the second term.

One of Longwell's July focus groups in Pennsylvania spoke with a man named Robert, who cast a ballot for Trump in 2024, but now is looking to support Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro.

“He wants to give himself medals, a ballroom. . . . People are suffering and, yeah, let’s plunk down $6 billion, change the ballroom. I don’t get any of that stuff," Robert said.

A Georgia Trump voter named Emmanuel sees the same thing. "The richest of the richest, the people at the very top, they’re just continuing to get rich. I think that they will give the Trump administration an A+, you know, because they’re just enriching themselves. . . . I think we were lied to. I just think we were lied to. . . .I remember . . . having traveled to other countries and walking around seeing big paintings of their political leaders, you know, in public spaces like airports or, you know, even schools. And then seeing that he kind of wants to have his face in big government buildings, it just shows me that this person cares about only power."

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