Last week, four hours after Trump received his felony conviction of falsifying business records, The New York Times and Republican pollster Frank Luntz conducted a focus group with 11 undecided voters from across the country to understand why they’re still not sure who they’re going to cast their ballot for in 2024. The riveting result, published Tuesday, allows us to briefly peer into the minds of some of the most coveted but poorly understood parts of the American electorate. And while these voters’ words should humble political prognosticators on both sides of the aisle, I found that a lot of the conversation was particularly concerning for Biden.
In addition to being undecided, the participants all had supported or been open to former President Donald Trump and one of his opponents (Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden) at least once in the 2016, 2020 or 2024 elections. Swing voters tend to be less politically engaged and hold idiosyncratic policy views that don’t necessarily add up to a conventionally discernible ideology. And in this election cycle, many of them are defined by their distaste for both candidates. In this focus group, those tendencies were on full display, with participants panning both Trump and Biden and taking counterintuitive positions on candidates they once favored.
More than anything, the conversation was a reminder that the swing voter is profoundly unpredictable.
More than anything, the conversation was a reminder that the swing voter is profoundly unpredictable. But the conversation made clear that Trump’s felony conviction is not a slam dunk for Biden. We already knew that most of Trump’s base is unfazed by Trump’s legal troubles, but what’s interesting is how voters without a firm commitment to either candidate split on the issue. While two participants described Trump’s conviction as disqualifying in their eyes, another two said it was Biden who looked worse after the verdict. John, a 58-year-old white Pennsylvania voter, said that Biden was “off the table” for him because he didn’t like how Biden responded to the verdict, explaining that “Biden looks ungracious and looks incredibly weak to me.” And Jorge, a 52-year-old Latino voter from California, said he agreed because Biden “has dirty hands on this” and that “they need to do something to influence voters, something like this, so he can win the election.”
Both voters seemed to believe that Biden was either somehow behind the trial or unfairly exploiting it, and that made him less favorable in their view. And one participant, Neshunda, a 36-year-old Black Florida voter, didn’t go quite as far, but seemed upset by the notion that the trial was a political exercise: “It just seems like with the timing of the trial and everything, right before elections, it’s just a little off-putting for them to go to this level.”
When asked by the pollster whether the verdict increased or decreased their trust in the legal system, nobody raised their hand to say it increased their trust. But four people raised their hand to say it decreased their trust in the system.
Another takeaway: Trump’s outlaw status could help him with swing voters.
Typically one thinks of Trump as impressing his most hard-core supporters with his self-comparisons to the gangster Al Capone, or his open confessions that he plans to break the rules and to be “dictator” for a day. But the focus group suggested that even non-Trump partisans who either once found him appealing or still do find Trump’s transgressiveness to be a positive trait. In one of the most striking exchanges in the focus group, Jonathan, a 38-year-old Black Florida voter, says: “You have to remember why Trump is the choice of millions of people. Trump represents a shock to the system. His supporters don’t hold him to the same ethical standards. He’s the antihero, the Soprano, the ‘Breaking Bad,’ the guy who does bad things, who is a bad guy but does them on behalf of the people he represents.”
At this point, three other participants chimed in that that’s why they voted for him in 2016. In both those shows Tony Soprano and Walter White are revealed to be remorseless and selfish sociopaths. One way to look at this is that, as with many cultural works featuring so-called antiheroes, many people miss the point about the moral arc of the story, overlook the charismatic individual’s deep flaws, and are seduced by their appetite for breaking rules. Again, what’s important to note is that Trump has that effect even on some people who aren’t totally drunk on MAGA kool-aid. The less charitable interpretation is that people like Jonathan are simply fine with being governed by an outright sociopath as long as they see that sociopath improving their life in some way.
Which brings us to what was top of mind for the focus group participants: the economy. When asked what was the most important issue for their vote, seven participants listed the economy, and a number of them specifically highlighted concerns about inflation. That fits with broader polling trends indicating that the economy will remain central to voter consideration this year. The issue for Biden is less the state of the economy at the moment, which is growing at a decent clip and has extremely low unemployment and moderating inflation. It’s more about winning the battle over perception of the economy, reminding people of the nature of Trump’s governance of the economy, and promising policies that instill voters with confidence about the future and broadly shared prosperity. Biden, in particular, is still smarting from higher inflation earlier in his tenure, and needs to address that head on.
By contrast, only one participant in the focus group listed concern about “harm to our democratic republic” when describing issues top of mind in their vote. That might be hard to believe if you consume left-leaning media, where Trump’s every promise to transform the U.S. into a more authoritarian state drives countless news cycles. But in the informational environment of many politically disengaged voters, there isn’t necessarily a fear of erosion of democracy. To win the affection of those voters, Biden cannot rely on fear of Trump's autocratic aspirations. He must instead demonstrate how he’ll make the country a better place to live.