Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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What was your most important issue when you voted in 2024?
Probably the economy. Well, the economy, first and foremost.
I lived solely on Social Security, so the economy, it was extremely important to me.
I didn't really think my dollar was going as far as it could.
Donald Trump was elected in 2024 on the promise that he would fix the economy, the number one issue for a broad coalition of voters.
Today, just after one year of President Trump, our economy is booming, incomes are rising, investment is soaring, inflation has been defeated.
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Chapter 2: What economic issues are driving voters away from Trump?
These are really strong numbers for him. Usually Donald Trump had approval ratings in the low 40s or even the 30s. So as Donald Trump entered office, he entered with a much broader coalition, with an electorate that was much more hopeful about what a second term for President Trump might look like. They thought he might get the border under control and reduce crime.
And he also entered as a kind of cultural phenomenon in a way that he hadn't previously. You might remember there was talk of a conservative vibe shift in the culture a year ago.
Right. And a lot of this talk of a vibe shift came down to who was in this broader coalition that you mentioned. Younger voters, more non-white voters, somewhat disengaged, infrequent voters. They all moved towards Trump.
Yeah, Trump made enormous gains in 2024 among young, non-white, less educated, lower income voters. Voters who traditionally had voted for Democrats and who Democrats had often taken for granted.
And the question, right, was always how durable is that shift? Was this change in the political landscape permanent or was it just a flash in the pan? Was it just a reaction to Biden? And it sounds like we have some information about that now.
That's right. We've just finished a national poll one year into Donald Trump's term, and it does not look like the polls did a year ago or like the polls did in the run-up to his victory in 2024. His approval rating is at 40%. That's down considerably from the 48% favorability rating he had heading into the election, let alone the majority support that he had when he entered office.
And importantly, those big demographic shifts that we saw in the 2024 election, they have mostly reversed. Young, non-white, lower income, less engaged voters, they have gone from being his relative strong points to, again, looking much weaker for him. In fact, in almost every respect, it looks like a poll that you could have done during Trump's first term.
Now, as you pointed out, this does sort of answer this longstanding question about what happened in the 2024 election. Was this a permanent shift or was this just a reaction to Joe Biden? On its face, it looks a little bit more like a reaction to Joe Biden, or at the very least, it's certainly not a permanent shift.
I do think, though, that that doesn't mean that what happened during the 2024 campaign wasn't real. What it may mean is that Donald Trump squandered an opportunity that he did enter with real support from groups that haven't traditionally voted for Republicans, but he has not succeeded in consolidating that support in office.
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Chapter 3: How did Trump's approval ratings change after one year in office?
many of his worst numbers are on the economy. And it's partly because when you really dig into the attitudes of the individual voters who say that they no longer support him, those voters are really unusually likely to say that the economy and affordability is the biggest problem facing the country.
So is it fair to say that those switchers, they went to Trump in 2024 because of the economy, and now you see them moving away from him, turning away from Trump because of the economy?
I think that's right. Now, again, Donald Trump is unpopular on almost every issue we asked about. It's possible that if the economy was fine, they'd still be upset at him over his handling of ICE, for instance. What we know, though, is that these voters say that the economy is the biggest problem facing the country.
44% of the Trump defectors cite economic issues compared with 24% of other voters. And we know that they give him really negative marks on his handling of the economy, even though that used to be one of his greatest strengths.
So to me, the economy looks like the most straightforward, central explanation for why these voters swing back against Donald Trump in our poll, even though there are undoubtedly other factors as well.
And what about the handling of the economy are these voters so frustrated with? Like, what's their specific beef?
How far down the affordability rabbit hole do you want to go here, by the way?
Let's go all the way.
Well, standing on the outside of the hole for a second, I mean, I think that most people say that he just hasn't made the country more affordable. A majority say that... His policies have made life less affordable. So he was elected to make things more affordable. They think it's less affordable. The tariffs are probably part of that.
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Chapter 4: What were voters' expectations for Trump's economic policies?
Sixty five percent of people said that a middle class life was out of reach for most people. And more than three quarters say it's gotten harder to achieve that middle class life than a generation ago. So making this problem worse is a really big deal. It means putting what people ordinarily expect out of their life and out of the life of most Americans out of reach for them.
When we come back, we'll hear from voters that our producers Olivia Nat and Stella Tan spoke to on the phone about the kind of lives they want to live and how far they are from achieving them. We'll be right back.
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Hello, this is Kelsey. Hi, Kelsey. This is Olivia calling from The New York Times. This is Stella Tan.
I'm calling because you recently participated in a New York Times poll. Would you have a few minutes to chat? Sure.
Okay. My name is Marcus Vila. I'm 38 years old. Nick Syracuse, 24 years old.
I am a current student and I'm 31.
I work as an events manager for a security company. I'm a caregiver. I'm a reinsurance broker.
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Chapter 5: What demographic shifts occurred during the 2024 election?
But I think the story is voters thought Joe Biden was a complete catastrophe on the economy. Views of his presidency and the economy really bottled out in 2022 as a result of that. Voters still look back today and say what happened then, that's the biggest reason why things are bad now, is the stuff that happened when Joe Biden was president. Hmm.
And as we get further and further from 2021 and 2022, people are gradually reevaluating the state of the economy upward as we move away from that post-pandemic upheaval.
It's like people are saying we were in this incredibly deep hole. We've dug out of that hole a little bit, but we still have a really long way to go. And I'm not satisfied with where we are.
Still have a long way to go. And they don't even think Trump is helping here.
So on the whole, neither side is making a compelling case to voters that they're going to successfully tackle these huge forces that are just bearing down on people right now economically. I have to ask, though, Trump does seem to be recognizing that this has become a big problem for him and the party.
He's been proposing these radical solutions to the affordability problems, things like capping credit card interest rates, debt, banning private equity from buying single-family homes, announcing deals with pharmaceutical companies to lower drug prices. I think there are a lot of questions about whether he's actually going to be able to do these things.
But do you view that as a potentially helpful push by the president to try to claw back what he's lost on this issue?
I think the I am generally pretty skeptical of gimmicky policies. It reminds me actually a little bit about how Biden and Harris handled this. I mean, you may remember shrinkflation and they were going to go after price gouging and they had their own bucket of gimmicks that they proposed in 2023 and 2024.
It probably did help them compared to saying nothing at all, but it didn't solve the problem. It wasn't going to solve the problem. They didn't champion these ideas in a full throated, incredible way that had a chance to persuade voters that they were going to be solutions either. So, you know, as long as the problems persist, Donald Trump is still going to be weighed down by this issue.
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