In this week’s live recording of the Strength In Numbers podcast, G. Elliott Morris and David Nir, publisher of The Downballot (and back from a week off!), talk about new polling showing Trump holding his MAGA base on the war in Iran—but losing ground overall.
Trump’s support has badly decayed among soft partisans, lower-income whites, and Hispanic voters — the groups that swung most sharply toward him in 2024. We also cover a few bad pundit hot takes about the results of the Democratic primary for Illinois’ 9th Congressional District.
Here are the big takeaways:
Trump is losing the working-class voters who put him in office. Our polling shows white voters making under $50,000 backed Trump by 22 points in 2024. But his net approval with this group today is minus 4 — a 26-point swing. Lower-income Hispanics have moved even further, from minus 7 in the 2024 vote to minus 41 on approval now. The voters who trusted Trump to lower prices are turning against him the fastest. And as Trump’s new war in Iran causes gas prices to skyrocket, it’ll be worth revisiting these numbers in the near future.
There is no MAGA civil war — at least not among voters. Far-right influencers like Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Megyn Kelly, and Marjorie Taylor Greene have all attacked Trump over Iran. But polls show about 90% of self-identified “MAGA Republicans” support the war. The real split is among elites, not the base. We discuss what David dubbed “the X-Factor”: Journalists who spend too much time on X often mistake loud voices from political castoffs for movement among the mass public. There’s also a methodological wrinkle for real polling sickos: Anyone disillusioned enough with Trump to stop calling themselves MAGA will drop out of that polling cohort entirely. That may in turn overstate loyalty within the broader MAGA-sympathetic universe and decrease it among what Elliott calls “soft partisans.”
Centrist pundits learned the wrong thing from the Democratic primary in IL-09. Kat Abughazelah, a 26-year-old first-time candidate funded heavily by small-dollar donations, lost to Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss by less than 4 points in a 15-candidate field — outperforming a sitting state senator who was backed by $7 million in AIPAC spending. Pundits called this a bad night for “very online progressives,” but if anyone’s “too online,” it’s these critics. By focusing on the binary loss, they are missing the opportunity to learn from Abughazelah’s narrow margin. The real takeaway is that a digitally native outsider came unusually close to victory in a race where endorsements, name recognition, and outside money all pointed to a much wider gap.
If you missed our video livestream, you can watch it by clicking play on the web version of this post. We record the podcast live every Thursday at 2 PM Eastern. We always discuss a few pre-planned topics and then answer questions submitted live by viewers. You can also subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app to listen on your own time. And if you do listen via one of those apps, please drop us a five-star rating and review if you feel we’ve earned it — it really helps people discover the show!
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