A new Michigan focus group of 2024 Trump voters who now disapprove of his job performance reveals a surprising pattern: several are drifting toward Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, and their reasoning echoes the same distrust of political insiders that once drew them to Trump himself.
The group, conducted by Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell, found some voters explicitly rejecting Republican nominee Mike Rogers for being too close to the political establishment. Cory, a 29-year-old database coordinator, said he was relieved El-Sayed beat a primary opponent backed by roughly $30 million from AIPAC, arguing outside money and foreign influence in elections bother him regardless of party.
"If we're gonna be America First, I think we really need to be America First," Cory said.
Other voters pushed back hard against a Rogers ad tying El-Sayed to podcaster Hasan Piker's comment that America "deserved 9/11." Tamara, 40, said the tough-on-crime framing rang hollow given broader corruption in Washington.
"All of Washington is full of criminals right now," Tamara said.
It's an apparent vindication of Democrats' new strategy to combat GOP attacks of being soft on crime, by countering with the GOP's track record of public corruption.
Jade, 30, pointed out that Rogers spent years with the FBI at a moment when public trust in federal agencies has cratered over how the Jeffrey Epstein case has been handled, arguing his résumé wasn't the asset it might once have been. Valerie, 39, made a related point about fairness, noting the attack line didn't even come from El-Sayed's own mouth, since he'd already distanced himself from the comment, and suggested using someone else's words against him only made him look more sympathetic by comparison.
Polling from the New York Times and Siena College found El-Sayed pulling in 8 percent of 2024 Trump voters, well ahead of similar Democratic Senate candidates in New Hampshire and Maine. Conservative commentator Tucker Carlson has even praised El-Sayed's campaign as "literally Trumpian," while blasting Rogers as unfit to serve.
Longwell argued the dynamic reflects a broader truth about the electorate: voters are messier and less ideologically consistent than either party's strategists assume, and in a cycle where Republican approval numbers are cratering, that unpredictability could work in El-Sayed's favor.
