Republican campaign literature is piling up at party headquarters in western Michigan because volunteers aren't showing up to deliver it to voters, the latest sign that weariness with President Donald Trump could cost the GOP in November.
Doug Koopman, who sits on the Kent County Republican Party's executive committee, told the New York Times the party has had trouble finding canvassers to pick up brochures, so bags of them are sitting unused at their office.
"There's very low energy on the Republican side," Koopman said.
The Times interviewed nearly three dozen people in the region and found the same exhaustion again and again, including among those who have voted for Trump more than once. Political analyst Charlie Cook has a name for what could follow – a "red undertow." His argument is that Democrats aren't surging so much as the Trump brand is sinking and taking other Republicans with it.
"People are tired," said Al Pscholka, a Republican and former Michigan state lawmaker. "The whole divider-in-chief thing, it's gotten to the point where it's just exhausting."
Lindsay Kronemeyer has knocked doors for Trump twice and ran for the statehouse in 2022. She told the Times she hasn't been following the races near her home in deep-red Allegan County, where the only campaign signs she has seen are for a judge.
"I don't hear the chatter on the Republican side of 'Trump this, Trump that,'" she said. "He's just not there in my head anymore."
Jim Pasek, 80, of Gobles, has voted for Trump twice. He said the president has lost his way, pointing to a war Trump promised to avoid and gas prices that have soared.
"He's not making sense," Pasek said. "It confuses me, and then I just get disgusted and tune out."
He was especially angry that Trump called the rising cost of gas "chump change."
"No, it's not! It's killing the people," Pasek said.
The drop-off is happening in other states, as well. Brandon Tremaine, a graduate student in Texas who voted for Trump in 2020, said he would follow the president's call to vote as if Trump were on the ballot.
"That's exactly what I'm going to do — not vote," Tremaine said.
Polling has consistently measured that enthusiasm gap. In a New York Times/Siena poll last month, 61 percent of Democrats said they were absolutely certain to vote, compared with 56 percent of Republicans, and Democrats' 7-point lead among registered voters grew to 9 points among likely voters.
A retired Republican consultant told the Times that Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-MI), who has always won easily, is now in "the fight of his life," and that Democratic yard signs are appearing in Ottawa County in numbers he has never seen.
Some Trump voters say they're unsure whether to vote at all.
"Does he really know what he's doing?" asked Warren Stewart, a home restorer in Stevensville. "I just spent $60 on $30 worth of groceries and am about to go fill up for $5 a gallon. It feels like they're stress-testing us."