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MAGA chauvinism comes home to roost

Trump is losing some of his oldest supporters

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This was the week when several prominent Trump boosters — like Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and Alex Jones turned on the president very publicly. They’re hardly alone. Trump’s approval rating has nosedived, even among people who voted for him in 2024.

The newest members of Trump’s coalition — nonwhite and non-college voters — have gotten the most attention for leaving it, but they’re not actually the ones who have fled in the highest numbers.

In fact, that would be women, as Lakshya Jain, The Argument’s director of political data, explained in a live conversation with Central Air’s Josh Barro and Ben Dreyfuss.

“I thought it was a remarkable finding: Twenty-one percent of women who voted for Trump now disapprove of the way he’s handling his job. I mean, that sounds awful,” Barro said. “If you lose 20% of the electorate, you get absolutely crushed in a midterm election.”

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However, just because they disapprove of Trump doesn’t necessarily mean these voters will support Democrats — or even withhold their votes from Republicans. Lakshya explained that about 3 in 4 Trump voters who disapprove of Trump will still show up to vote for Republicans.

“These aren’t people that are like, ‘I hate both sides, I won’t show up.’ These are people that still are going to, by and large, most of them are going to show up,” he said.

To learn more about why Trump-supporting women have begun turning on him and why they are reluctant to cross the aisle and vote for Democrats, check out the full conversation above. And to see more results from this poll along with Lakshya’s take on the political implications, you can find that below.

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