A year ago, Donald Trump was riding high. The man who had lost the presidency four years earlier, then led a failed insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, was now about to be inaugurated again after improbably winning a nonconsecutive second term. Almost everyone seemed to agree something seismic had just occurred. Trump was no longer just the leader of a powerful movement. He had “remade the electorate,” as CNN’s Harry Enten said in February: Republicans were surging not only with men—particularly those without college degrees—but also with young people and Latinos.
Armed with a supposed mandate from voters, Trump and his allies began the year with a wave of destruction—of immigrant communities, the federal government, foreign aid, and more. Democrats, cowed by the election results and terrified by the administration’s blitzkrieg, largely kept their heads down and wrung their hands over how to rehabilitate their tarnished brand.
What a difference a year makes. Today, that widely accepted consensus about the 2024 election seems absurd. Trump hadn’t reshaped the electorate at all—he had simply won another toss-up election. Yes, he narrowly won the popular vote this time, but by a margin—in both popular and Electoral College terms—that was not historically impressive. And now, those new voters he brought in have already abandoned him. A Friday CNN poll found that he is 29 points underwater with independents and 30 points down with both Latinos and young voters. Trump’s new coalition is already in tatters—and there is no sign that these voters will be coming back to the president or his party anytime soon.
There was, of course, another explanation for Trump’s shocking return to power, and it had little to do with him or his movement. Joe Biden’s presidency was quickly deflated by stubbornly high inflation. He and his party bore little responsibility for the problem, which largely stemmed from post-pandemic supply shocks, but to the public that hardly mattered. And there was the problem of Biden’s advanced age, which his team tried to deal with by hiding him from the public. By the time he bowed to pressure and ended his reelection campaign, it was too late: With no time for a competitive primary, the only plausible Democratic candidate was Kamala Harris, his vice president, who of course was synonymous with an administration many blamed for high prices.
Trump’s success with low-propensity voters played a decisive role in his victory, but those are the precise voters who are currently fleeing the sinking ship. Fifty-eight percent of the electorate already sees his second term as a failure. He receives failing marks from a majority of voters in every policy area, including the two—the economy and immigration—that played the most decisive role in his 2024 victory. A clear majority of voters see his presidency as one that has failed in its core objectives and that has overstretched its power. It’s a message that largely aligns with the one many Democrats, like Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have been pushing: that Trump’s fascistic immigration policies are coming at the expense of their overall well-being.
Only three in 10 voters view the economy favorably—a number roughly similar to what it was two years ago. High on their own supply after winning back the White House, Republicans quickly forgot that they actually just got lucky. Voters were so frustrated about inflation and stubbornly high prices that they were willing to give Trump another shot; most of them, it seems, would have voted for anyone who wasn’t a Democrat. But Trump and his allies immediately turned to other priorities: ramping up a fascistic deportation regime, gutting the federal workforce, and launching an imperialistic wave of military bombings and interventions.
Trump, of course, simply chooses to ignore information that challenges his worldview. One of the biggest differences between his second term and his first is that he is surrounded by people at every level of his administration who have adopted a similar mindset. They are still behaving as if they have a mandate to reshape the nation, even though their support has rapidly collapsed. There is nothing that can restrain an administration like this, at least for now. But polls like this suggest a reckoning is coming, and soon. Trump is remaking the electorate again—by pushing voters into the arms of Democrats.
