President Donald Trump's political supporters have long been described as cult-like, from their willingness to change their ideology based on Trump's whims to their reflexive distrust of established experts. In light of the Republican leader's politically devastating losses in the 2026 midterm elections, these same true believers are now angry at every voter who did not stand by their man, at least according to a recent in-depth study.
"Last week we assembled a focus group of Republicans who voted for President Trump in both 2020 and 2024, and who, except for some local elections, voted straight-ticket Republican in this year’s midterms," wrote polling expert Sarah Longwell in The Bulwark on Sunday.
"In my conversation with these voters, one thing became abundantly clear in their cacophony of cope: They were not blaming Trump," Longwell added. "Instead, they were blaming the GOP candidates on the ticket for being terrible. They were blaming social media for pushing Trump Derangement Syndrome. And they were blaming their fellow Americans, who they insisted were just too brainwashed and emotional to just hold their noses and vote for the terrible candidates that Republicans offered them."
Longwell proceeded to include relevant examples.
"A lot of the blue wave in Georgia resulted from “irrational thinking,” James, 56, from Georgia, said, by “people who voted for Trump last time, but maybe are not Republicans in general,"" Longwell wrote. "He found these swing voters’ decisions understandable, but unwise: I think maybe they were so frustrated either because of their situation or because they heard in the media they should be frustrated, and so they just voted for the other guy or the other gal. And if any of them think that the Democrat-led Congress is gonna help with affordability, they’re completely irrational."
Longwell continued, "Contempt for opposing voters—whose decisions always seem to be made by emotion or by “the media”—was a common feature of this group. But even amid this wallowing, some of the focus-group participants still acknowledged that the country was in a bad place, and that was pulling people away from the GOP. “I’ve kind of worked through several stages of grief as to what’s going on in Texas,” said Gayle, 75, from Texas. “But I think it’s a perfect storm. I think honest, working-class Texans voted their pocketbook.” But the sympathy just about ended there. More often than not, these voters were appalled that their fellow voters could back Democrats—and suspected they simply weren’t educated in all the ways those Democrats were evil."
She went on, "Here is Gayle again: Even if there were other issues for me, it wouldn’t matter. I’m not gonna vote for a party that’s gonna kill babies. So I think there are people that may not have the understanding of life, and they’re not core-value voters, and so I think they voted their pocketbook.3And here’s Anthony, 58, from Pennsylvania: We had Republicans voting Democrat. People vote, and they don’t vote their core issues. There’s some ideas that Democrats have that are good ideas, but I’ll never vote for a Democrat. . . . One of my big issues is pro-life, you know what I mean? And they’re pro-choice. I can’t vote for a pro-choice candidate, you know?"
Longwell pointed out that, even though Democrats are scorned to not look down on Trump voters, Trump voters do the same thing toward Democrats.
"Cathy, 65, from Texas, wrote the following," Longwell recalled. ""TDS affected a lot of voters, especially women. It seems that the younger generation is fairly swayed by social media, which is a scary trend. They don’t question what they see/read like my generation does. They are not skeptical yet. As far as Texas, many did NOT vote for Paxton. I held my nose and voted for him. But those that did not vote for Paxton, were basically a vote for Talafreako, just like when Perot ran for president.""
Longwell, added, "Note that Cathy here also expressed her displeasure with the Republican choice she was offered. And her dissatisfaction extended beyond Paxton: "As far as Hinojosa, look at Texas and the Hispanic vote, she was able to garner a lot just based on her name. And Abbott did not campaign as much as he probably should have.""
Speaking with AlterNet in August, University of Bristol cognitive scientist Dr. Stephan Lewandowksy argued that one can understand supporters of President Donald Trump by understanding their psychology as analogous to that of internet trolls.
"We know that trolls take pleasure in trolling, which means getting other people upset," Lewandowsky told AlterNet. "And I think that's what we're observing here — this is basically trolling behavior. So would these people score high on the dark triad? I would think yes, but I don't know of any data that's done a personality profile specifically of MAGA voters. We do have it for trolls, though — I have data on that. People have published research on it, and the similarities are just overwhelming. So I'd be very surprised if these were well-adjusted, nice people."
