Last week I traveled to Canton, Ohio to sit in on a focus group of
Obama, Trump, and Romney-Clinton voters.
There were 12 total and they were talking about their feelings on the country and politics
in 2018.
Ohio is a quintessential swing-state in elections, whether presidential or midterms and these
Romney-Clinton and Obama-Trump voters are the perfect example of that.
They can really decide elections by voting one way in one year and then swinging to the
opposite side in the next election.
The clearest difference between these two swing voters was in their views of their direction
of the country and their concerns about immigration.
On a scale from 0-10, with 0 being the totally wrong direction and 10 being the totally right
direction, in what direction is our country moving?
Obama-Trump voters are way more concerned about illegal immigration
than Romney-Clinton voters.
They're also more likely to say that the country is moving in the right direction whereas Romney-Clinton
voters think that it is not moving in the right direction.
For the Trump voters who think that the country is moving in the right direction, they mostly
associate that with how the economy is doing
and a lot of them think the economy is doing well.
They mention things like the number of jobs we have, the low unemployment rate, NAFTA,
trade.
But when you actually ask them if they personally feel like the economy is booming, only two
people raised their hand and said they felt that way.
Many Trump voters even said that they are living pay check to pay check.
They said they are only seeing a couple dollars increase in their paychecks from the GOP tax law.
They recognize that the jobs they have are not helping them make ends meet even though
they voted for President Trump thinking that the economy would get better personally for them.
This is one of the more surprising things I learned from this focus group, is that
These two groups of swing voters are aware of the fact that
this is the so-called, "Year of the woman."
That there are more women running for office.
But everyone was pretty apathetic about having equal representation in Congress.
The average score for this room was 4.4.
It was not terribly important.
When they started talking the reasons for this I learned that it was really a generational thing.
Some of the older women in the group they mentioned that when they were younger they
weren't having political discussions with their friends, they weren't protesting, they
weren't politically active.
Some of the older women even thought that women aren't as politically savvy as men are.
There was one woman, a 24 year old, who said that all she talks about with her friends
is politics and that she wants to run for office.
Swing voters matter because they can really decide an election.
They have no party loyalty and are kind of unpredictable.
They have a independent streak that can lead them to vote for one candidate one year and
the opposite in the following election.
This will really matter in 2018 but we should look out on how this changes things in 2020
as well.