Opinion | Donald Trump’s 2024 Run and the 2022 Midterm Elections: 17 Swing Voters Discuss

When Donald Trump was president, you rarely heard Trump voters blame him when anything went wrong; it was the Democrats’ fault, usually, or the deep state or Robert Mueller or the F.B.I. or was due to any number of conspiracy theories. Which is why it was striking, during our focus group with 17 swing voters last Thursday, to hear so many of those who voted for Mr. Trump in 2020 say that they blamed him for Republican candidates’ performing poorly in last week’s midterms.

Turns out they were just getting started.

When we asked the group a moment later for a word or phrase to describe Mr. Trump, the once-foretold red wave was replaced by a wave of exhaustion, annoyance and frustration — a wave that only grew in strength when we asked them to react to Mr. Trump’s likely plans to announce a new bid for the presidency on Tuesday night.

“He ran for re-election and lost. He should go away,” said one Florida voter who backed Mr. Trump in 2020. An Arizona voter who also supported Mr. Trump said, “I feel like he’ll be doing it for revenge. I’m not going to be voting for him this time.”

These swing voters — described this way because they split their votes between parties and are not hard-core partisans — were not the group of Mr. Trump’s dreams. Still, several of them credited him with a strong economy and Russia’s not invading Ukraine on his watch. When our focus group moderator Frank Luntz asked the participants if they agreed with the statement “Donald Trump’s record was good, but his personality is bad,” 14 of the 17 swing voters raised their hands.

Another revealing moment came at the end of the focus group, when we asked which party had better candidates running in the midterms. Eight participants who tend to vote Republican said they thought the Democrats had better candidates — another implicit rebuke of Mr. Trump, who prided himself on endorsing and championing his preferred candidates last week.

As Mr. Trump looks ahead to 2024 — not to mention President Biden, who came in for some tough feedback as well — the focus group is a sign that he can’t count on his onetime voters to simply fall in line again.

Alene

44, white, Biden voter, California, corporate sales executive