Gerald and Wally both voted for President Trump in 2024, helping him with the state of Georgia. Their votes in 2026 illustrate the challenges the president and his party face in today's midterms. Gerald is still all in, giving Trump an A+++.
He cast his ballot on the first day of early voting in Georgia for Republicans Mike Collins for Senate and Rick Jackson for governor. "Red all the way down the ballot," Gerald said. "There was one instance where there was nothing but a Democrat running unopposed and I preferred to write my own name in, because I refuse to give a Democrat my vote." Wally, on the other hand, represents a fraying of the Trump coalition.
Every time he's been asked since March, he's given the president an F. "I just don't think that he's an effective leader and I thought that as Americans we'd do so much better," he said. Wally said inflation is the top issue influencing his vote, but he doesn't have a lot of hope that any one politician or any one election can fix it.
He also voted early in Georgia for the Democratic Senate incumbent Jon Ossoff and gubernatorial candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms — a vote against Trump and MAGA as much as anything else. He gives Democrats and Republicans in Congress an F as well. "I think these people are essentially stealing money from the American public and we need wholesale change in this midterm, and we also need a big change for the next presidential election," he said.
Wally and Gerald are among a group of swing voters in swing states NPR has been checking in with regularly as part of a long-term reporting project called Swing Shift. NPR has agreed not to use their full names so they can speak freely about politics, without fear of personal or professional repercussions. All of the Swing Shift voters have cast a ballot for President Trump over the past decade.
Most of them voted for him just two years ago. When Americans cast their votes in the midterm elections, they'll have the chance to weigh in on the state of the country, nearly two years into President Trump's second term in office. Asked for one word or phrase to describe how they are feeling, Swing Shift voters used words like "messy," "divided," "disarray," and "scary.
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