Mara Liason

speaker

262 appearances 3 recordings 1 series first heard Sep 2026 last heard 5d ago

Mara Liason’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 3.

Appearances

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The NPR Politics Podcast · Voters say the American Dream is dead. Why? · 15 Sep 2026 podcast

And I'm Mara Lyason, senior national political correspondent. matched

We do a swing voter focus group every month in a different battleground state. matched

This month was Michigan. matched

And swing voters are defined by us as people who voted for Joe Biden in twenty twenty and Donald Trump in twenty twenty four. matched

We do this focus group with Engage and Nelson Recruiting. matched

Uh and just a disclaimer, focus groups are not polls. matched

They don't tell us what voters are feeling because they're too small a sample size. matched

We know what voters are feeling from polls, but focus groups let us delve deep into the why they are feeling that. matched

They're feeling bad, they're feeling sour, they're feeling that everything they have to buy costs more than it used to and they're struggling to hold on to a middle class life. matched

They also live in Michigan and they draw a direct line between Trump's tariffs and the higher prices they're paying. matched

And here are three of our focus group voters, Barbara, Jean and Jess. matched

We only use their first names because that's the terms under which they agreed to be in this focus group. matched

So there you have it. matched

These are voters, Michigan voters. matched

Canada is a huge market for them and they understand that tariffs are a tax on imports. matched

And the president doesn't want them to. matched

uh de facto, if not de jure on the top of the ballot. matched

In other words, he specifically tells people, pretend I'm on the ballot, when actually most Republicans I talk to think he's a drag on Republicans on the ballot. matched

So that's the problem. matched

You have people like Mike Rogers and Susan Collins, as you mentioned. matched

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