Why these swing voters say they’re frustrated with Trump
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Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast for Thursday, January 22nd, 2026. I'm Myles Parks and I cover voting.
I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent.
And we are taping this at 1.06 p.m. on Thursday. And today on the show, we are hearing directly from a very important group of voters and introducing a new recurring segment for the podcast, which we're super excited about. Ashley, you and Mara have put this all together. We are talking specifically about swing voters. These are voters who voted for Joe Biden in 2020, Donald Trump in 2024. This is the holy grail for political reporters. Tell us more.
Right. So NPR is partnering with Engageus and Sego, which are messaging experts and market researchers. And a big part of what they do is just try to figure out why people feel the way they feel about something. And Rich Tao at Engageus, who came to NPR with this passion project of his, partners with a media company to get a sense of what swing voters in swing states are thinking about when it comes to the news. And I mean, there's a couple reasons of why this is super helpful to political reporters like Mara and I. For one, you know, We don't really know sometimes like what news and what messages get to voters.
What is the significance of swing voters in the 2024 election?
And that is a big part of what this discussion is. It's like, what news are you hearing and how are you hearing it? Where are you getting your information from? Another piece of this is like, you know, from the perspective of a political reporter, you know, when you go out into the campaign trail, meet voters, like the way you're meeting voters, like there are people you just don't get to. And so if you think of things like political rallies, canvassing, political events of any kind, those are already people who are either In a camp or pretty close to being solidly in a camp. And these are voters that are not in camps and they're pretty persuadable, which is also a part of the electorate that is harder to find.
So we are hearing straight from the horse's mouth, not just that they approve or disapprove something, but why.
Well, that's what I was going to say is this does feel similar, I guess, to polling, Mara, but also really different.
Can you explain that? No, it's not polling and that's really important. This is the why, not the what. This is not scientific. It's only a small group of voters. So we're not trying to extrapolate from their feelings to say, aha, public opinion is going in this direction. But we do want to know why they feel the way they do. And then later in the year, because we're going to do this once a month and you guys will be hearing from us once a month, we want to see how these feelings about the economy, about foreign policy change. affect their choice in the midterms? It's a little too early to really hold them down on that question, but that's what we're going to be looking for down the line.
Oh, it feels so useful. And we talk so much about how polarized the U.S. is. I do feel like a lot of people are like, cannot understand what other people who don't think exactly like them think. And they don't really understand the different ways in this changing world that people get information. And so I'm super excited to get this like kind of fly on the wall view of how people are thinking about politics in real time, right?
Yeah. Most people that you meet are in a camp. They are either Republican or Democrat. And as time has gone on in the past couple of decades, people have been more staunchly in one group or the other. But the people who are most politically important, like the people who really swing elections, are some of these persuadable, independent or swing voters. Now, I want to be clear, like not all swing voters are independents in the group that we talked to, for example. There were A lot of Republicans just so happen in this group, and that'll change over time. But these are folks who don't vote for one party, especially in elections.
And so let's dig into this first edition, right?
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