A new poll from More in Common suggests that he may be showing a degree of political mortality as the midterm elections approach.

The results, shared with Secrets, found that a key younger segment of his 2024 coalition says it may not vote Republican in November because of concerns about prices, the Iran war, and scandals such as the Epstein crisis. (A PDF of key findings is here.)

Only 2 in 5 of these “Reluctant Republicans” — people who voted Trump because they did not like Kamala Harris, who generally feel disconnected from politics, and a group that skews younger than the general Trump coalition — say they will vote only for GOP candidates.

Some 14% of that group say they will back Democrats instead, and 71% say they will vote for a mix of candidates.

Many may well just stay home, said Stephen Hawkins, global director of research for More in Common, a nonprofit group that examines social faultlines.

“It’s not just, ‘Oh, he’s not doing as well as we thought he would be doing in terms of helping the economy turn around,’” he told Secrets. “It’s that there’s a sense it’s much worse than that, because the president is trying to distract from the Epstein scandal, and it’s coming at the expense of everyday Americans’ pocketbooks.”

Overall, 11% of Gen Z and 8% of millennial Trump voters say they will vote Democratic, compared with 3% of Gen X and boomers.

The results come from a survey of 2,788 U.S. adults with an oversample of 2,029 2024 Trump voters. It was conducted from June 10 to 17.

And it builds on the group’s previous work on the anatomy of Trump’s 2024 coalition.

• MAGA hard-liners (29% of Trump’s 2024 voters): the fiery core of Trump’s base. They are fiercely loyal, deeply religious, and animated by a sense that America is in an existential struggle between good and evil.
• Anti-woke conservatives (21%): relatively well-off, politically engaged, and deeply frustrated by the perceived takeover of schools, culture, and institutions by the progressive Left.
• Mainline Republicans (30%): middle-of-the-road conservatives who play by the rules and expect others to do the same. Most do not follow politics closely.
• The Reluctant Right (20%): the most ambivalent cohort of Trump’s coalition, and the group most likely to have voted for Trump transactionally — the businessman who was “less bad” than the alternative.

Overall, the Reluctant Right gives Trump’s performance a rating of 52 out of 100. Compared with 93 for the MAGA hard-liners, 83 for anti-woke conservatives, and 82 for mainline Republicans.

The defections among this Reluctant Right come at an interesting moment in the MAGA movement, when key influencers Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene are breaking from Trump.

The poll examined their impact on the coalition and found that they were not yet triggering a broader GOP defection.

Most Trump voters who have heard their criticism say it has not changed their views, and some say it has actually made them more supportive of Trump.

But Hawkins said Carlson had the potential to trigger a deep rift.

“What he’s doing is he’s undermining the sense that President Trump is on your side,” he said. “That was already weaker in the Reluctant Right. And he is giving voice to concerns that younger Republicans, younger conservatives have about President Trump to do with being too focused on personal projects, being involved in corruption, having to hide his Epstein affiliation by changing the subject to foreign policy, and then having a negative impact on prices in the economy.

“To have a prominent critic like that giving voice to threads that we were already seeing in the spring is bad news.”

A setback for pedophiles in North Carolina

Congratulations to the North Carolina Republican Party, which passed a resolution at its recent state convention banning anyone charged or convicted of sexually abusing children from holding office.

You might think that such a history would be automatically disqualifying in the first place. Who would vote for someone like that? What sort of party official would want to promote a person with that on their resume?

But it seems that such a statute is needed for a state party where Harvey West Jr., a former police officer who spent six years in prison after pleading guilty to “taking indecent liberties with a child,” held two senior positions until his past came under renewed scrutiny recently.

His role as a key fundraiser is proving no end of fodder for Democrats, who are making merry with a string of embarrassing releases about Republican candidates who associated with West. The latest is Sarah Stevens, the Republican candidate in North Carolina’s 2026 Supreme Court race, who denies any relationship with the sex offender.

And it continues to dog Michael Whatley’s campaign for the Senate, as he dodges questions about how much he knew about West and when.

So, good news, then, that the party has set it down in black and white that sex offenders may no longer run for office, along with violent criminals.

Felons in general need not worry, however. A rival resolution barring all felons from holding state, district, or local office was shelved in favor of the leadership’s preferred version, with its narrower prohibition.

It is hard enough to find willing candidates these days without narrowing the pool so much.

Lunchtime reading

After 40 years in Congress, Nancy Pelosi to help create institute to train leaders of the future: There’s no getting rid of her. It’s like a zombie apocalypse with stilettos.

Communion by JD Vance review – a strange, poignant book about faith and the modern world: A thoughtful review by Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, who points out the obvious question left unanswered.

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