Swing state voters explained in interviews with the New York Times why they are switching support from President Biden in 2020 to former President Trump in 2024.
Recent polls of swing state voters showed former President Trump with an edge over President Biden in six key battleground states where he was narrowly defeated four years ago.
Now, some of those voters who supported Biden in 2020 are explaining why, looking ahead to the 2024 election, they want Trump back in office.
Frederick Westbrook, a retired Las Vegas hotel worker, told The New York Times in an interview that voting for Biden to kick Trump out of office was “the biggest mistake of my life.”
“As a Black man in America, I felt he was doing unjust things,” Westbrook said of Trump. “He’s got a big mouth, he’s not a nice person.” But while his view of Trump has not changed in the last four years, Westbrook told the Times his cost of living has risen too high under Biden’s watch.
“Everything is just about the economy,” said Westbrook, who now drives for Lyft to support his fixed retirement income. “I don’t really trust Donald Trump at all. I just think housing, food, my car, my insurance, every single piece of living has gone up.”
The view that Americans are not better off today than they were four years ago is shared by others who were among the 14% of survey respondents who said they won’t vote for Biden a second time, according to polls released Monday by The New York Times, Siena College and the Philadelphia Inquirer.
The survey results and follow-up interviews reported in the Times on Friday suggest discontent over the economy and the Israeli-Hamas war in Gaza, and a deterioration in support for Biden by younger, Black and Hispanic voters, “threaten to unravel the president’s Democratic coalition.
