From MAGA to maybe not: Why some Trump supporters are having second thoughts
Some Trump voters are expressing their reservations over their decision to vote for the U.S. president in last November’s election.
Over half of young Trump voters who took part in a recent NBC News survey say they are unhappy with the president’s performance, highlighting their discontent with his policies in areas such as immigration and tariffs.
As part of NBC’s “Deciders” series, created together with Syracuse University and the research firms Engagious and Sago, a group of 14 under-30s who voted for Trump in 2024 offered their thoughts on his second presidency.
Nine said they disapproved of the job Trump has done since returning to the White House in January, NBC revealed - although only one said they would change their vote in last year’s presidential election.
In November’s ballot, Trump comfortably defeated the Democratic vice-president Kamala Harris, winning 312 electoral-college votes to Harris’s 226. In the popular vote, the Republican prevailed by a margin of over two million.
And Trump’s return to the presidency came, in part, on the back of an improved election performance among young voters.
According to statistics compiled by Pew Research Center, Trump accrued 39% of the vote among Americans in the 18-29 age category in 2024, four percentage points up from his 2020 defeat to Joe Biden.
What did young Trump voters tell the “Deciders” series?
Discussing the immigration crackdown overseen by the president across the U.S., a 23-year-old Trump voter from Pennsylvania said: “I have not been agreeing with just taking a bunch of immigrants and even if they are innocent and throwing them back to God knows where.”
A 21-year-old from Wisconsin agreed: “The way that these people are being treated don’t align with my Christian values, or my pro-life values, or any of the values that a conservative may have.”
Meanwhile, a 25-year-old Arizonan described Trump’s aggressive policy of tariffs on foreign imports as “a little counterintuitive”.
She said she did not agree with the policy’s potential to lead to higher prices for consumers, as companies pass on the extra costs incurred by tariffs.
“I believe with the reasoning behind them, I do think that something has to be done to compete with the other countries,” she said.
“I think it just should have been affecting, maybe the big businesses versus us as the consumers being affected by it.”
Another Trump voter, a 22-year-old from Pennsylvania, said he opposed the administration’s handling of the scandal surrounding the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“I feel like the transparency as well is an issue, not just with tariffs, but also feeling like he switched positions when talking about the Epstein files,” the voter explained.
“From saying it’s a huge deal to saying that: ‘Oh, it’s not really a big deal.’”
Check out the NBC News, Engagious and Sago results in full.
UMass poll shows voters unsure on Trump
NBC News’ “Deciders” research follows a recent University of Massachusetts poll that found uncertainty among Trump voters of all ages about their decision to elect the 79-year-old in 2024.
According to the UMass poll, whose results were released in August, 31% of Trump voters were unwilling to say they felt very confident that they had made the right choice.
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