Frederick Westbrook, a retired Las Vegas hotel worker, voted for president Joe Biden in 2020 – as a vote to get Donald Trump Out of office. He now calls that ‘the biggest mistake of my life’.
“As a black man in America, I felt like he was doing unjust things,” he said of Trump. “He has a big mouth, he’s not a nice person.” According to him, nothing has changed. But one thing is true.
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“It’s all about the economics,” says Westbrook, who started driving for Lyft to support himself with a steady income after retirement. “I don’t trust Donald Trump at all. I just think housing, food, my car, my insurance, every bit of my livelihood has gone up.”
In a recent series of polls, Trump led Biden in five of six major battleground states, including Nevada. Across all states, Biden does not receive the support of 14% of respondents who said they voted for him in 2020 — voters like Westbrook who now say they will support Trump or a third-party candidate, or are undecided or unwilling to vote.
In follow-up interviews, many respondents were concerned with certain issues, saying that the issues that Democrats are strongest on, such as the right to abortion and preserving democracy, were also important to them. They disliked Trump’s personality — a reason why many voted against him in 2020 — and weren’t necessarily committed to voting.
But other issues had come to the fore and left them dissatisfied with the state of affairs – especially inflation, immigration and foreign policy.
Overall, defectors represent just 6% of registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to the new surveys from The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Siena College. But they can play a decisive role.
They include Democrats, Republicans and independents who voted for Biden in 2020. Many are still backing Democrats for Senate, suggesting Biden still has a chance to win back the support of some of them.
Jaredd Johnson, 25, who works in marketing in Atlanta, said he supported Biden in 2020 because he hoped he would return the country to a pre-pandemic normal, but he doesn’t think that’s the case. Although Johnson has reservations about Trump, he plans to vote for him.
He said he worries that priorities abroad are distracting from those at home. In conversations with friends and family, he said, they understand the importance of supporting Ukraine and Israel, sending aid to the Gaza Strip and helping immigrants.
But, he said, “our conversations are suddenly less about what’s happening abroad and more about how we’re struggling here, too.”
Biden defectors are more likely than others who voted for Biden in 2020 to say the economy is bad and they want fundamental change in the way things work. They are more likely to be young or Hispanic groups that have historically voted for Democrats in large numbers but are moving toward Republicans to some extent. (There are no major differences in the education levels of voters who remain behind Biden and those who do not.)
The surveys found that fewer voters went the other way: There were less than half as many Trump defectors in swing states as there were Biden defectors.
Biden defectors don’t necessarily like Trump
Christopher Sheffield, 61, a veterans counselor in Thomasville, Georgia, said Trump’s stance on race bothered him, but not as much as his concern that conflicts abroad could spiral into a world war.
“I’m an African American – of course I’m concerned about racism,” he said. “But guess what? I’ve had to deal with that my whole life.”
Biden is “a good guy,” Sheffield said. ‘But when I look at him, he looks weak. Now that North Korea, Putin and all those guys are ready to act, I think they will be a little more reluctant to challenge Trump than they were with Biden.” He plans to vote for Trump.
They are dissatisfied with the economy
While the economy is strong by many traditional measures, half of all registered voters in the surveys said it was bad — including nearly three-quarters of Biden defectors. By comparison, only 1 in 6 of those planning to vote for Biden reassessed the economy as bad.
In interviews, the Biden defectors repeatedly brought up the prices. Inflation remains stuck at 3.4%, although it has slowed significantly from the 2022 peak (9%).
Virginia Faris, 54, who lives in Wisconsin, is very happy with how she is doing. But her four young adult children are struggling financially. She blames “Biden’s policies of overspending and money printing” and plans to vote for Trump. However, she said there is a small chance she will change her mind depending on how the election goes. (Wisconsin was the only swing state in the poll where Biden led among registered voters. Among likely voters, Biden led only in Michigan.)
They want big changes
Biden defectors were more likely than Biden supporters to say the country needs big, fundamental changes. Nearly six-in-ten defectors believe that, while a similar share of Biden loyalists say they want politics to return to normal.
“All of our core values are gone, gone, and I’m just not happy about it at all,” said Amelia Earwood, 47, a security trainer with the US Postal Service in Georgia.
She believes that America’s political and economic systems need to be broken down. Her list of dissatisfaction is long: inflation, illegal immigration, the Biden administration’s recent delay of an arms shipment to Israel.
She called Trump “a terrible person,” but added, “I vote on his policies, and I think he could turn this country around, while Biden made a huge mess of it.”
Some support neither Trump nor Biden
Like Earwood, most Biden defectors said they were not happy with either candidate.
Joseph Drobena, 63, a field engineer and a veteran who lives in Salem, Wisconsin, voted for Biden in 2020 because he felt Trump was too friendly toward President Vladimir Putin of Russia and questioned Trump’s involvement in Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections.
He still worries about that, but said he “begrudgingly supported Trump” because he doesn’t like how the Biden administration is handling domestic issues, including crime and homelessness.
On the other hand, he also does not think Trump is strong on social policy. Discussing his positions, he said his support for Trump was wavering, and that he would consider running for independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to vote if he had enough support to be a viable candidate.
“We have to do better than either of those two,” he said.
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