The NPR Politics Podcast - These Georgia swing voters do not like the Iran war

Episode Date: April 16, 2026

NPR reporters observed focus groups of 13 Georgia voters who backed President Joe Biden in 2020 and President Donald Trump in 2024. We discuss what they had to say about the Iran war, the economy and Trump’s priorities.This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, political correspondent Ashley Lopez, and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson.This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and edited by Rachel Baye.Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And today on the show, another conversation with swing voters. These are voters who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and Donald Trump in 2024. We've been hearing from them from different states throughout the year. And this time, we're hearing from 13 voters in Georgia. Ashley, before we get into what these voters had to say, tell us a a little bit more about who they are? Right. So out of the 13 folks that we heard from in these two online focus groups, seven identified as independent voters, five as Republicans and one as a Democrat. And as you mentioned, these are folks who voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in 2020 and then supported the Republican candidate in 2024. So it's important. Like the thing that I always remember about these voters, that's important to keep in mind is that these voters may

have supported Trump in 2024, but this is not Trump's base. These are. are persuadable, movable voters who, in many cases, sort of wait close to an election to decide, you know, what they're feeling and what they want to see from a candidate. And by the way, both these focus groups were conducted by Engages. And Sego was a partner on that. These are messaging and market research firms. NPR is a partner on that project. And we were allowed to observe both those focus groups.

And Mara, this is not a situation where you're kind of counting, okay, two people or three people said this compared to five or six people said this last month or something, right? It's more about really listening to the substance of what they're saying. A focus group is not a poll. This is statistically insignificant, just 13 voters in Georgia. Polls tell us what voters are thinking. We know from public polls that a majority of Americans disapprove of the Iran war. What the focus group tells us is why they are thinking that.

They explain their feelings, and we can learn a lot from these voters about why they don't like the war. Well, let's go there then. I mean, that is the biggest news right now. How do these voters feel about the war now that we're into month two? Well, they don't like the war and they don't like how Donald Trump is conducting the war. And here is Natalie, for instance. She's going to tell us she actually is a Trump supporter. She's an independent.

She actually thinks the Iran war was the right thing to do. But here's what she said. And just to remind you about the ground rules, we agree to only identify these voters by their first names. There's no clear decision making. There's no clear policy. oh, I might kill everyone. I might not. We might have a revolution. The current new regime, like the new Iatoia might be better. Who knows? Yeah. And here's Joe talking also about Donald Trump. He's an agent of chaos when it comes to this kind of thing. It just, it scares me. And I don't, I feel like he went into this war without a real plan. And that scares me too. So the takeaway from those voters is that the job of an American president is to make your citizens.

citizens, the citizens of the United States feel secure about their national security, about their economic situation. And right now, the president of the United States is making people more anxious and scaring them. That's not a good place for an incumbent to be before the midterms. Yeah. And in both those clips, those voters were reacting to specifically social media posts that Trump made. They're very frustrated with the way Trump is communicating about this. But we also heard voters say that strategically they think that he's mishandling this. Nick, who's also an independent voter, he said that he thinks Trump misread the situation going into it. I think the New York Times just came out saying like 90% of our bases were hit or damaged in the Middle East.

It's completely ruined our relationship with the Middle East. It's going to affect the Petro Dollar. One thing that strikes me to listen to these clips, these voters seem pretty red in on what's going on right now. I guess can you talk a little bit as you watch these focus groups? Does it feel like these are people who are reading and watching the news every single day? or I guess how, talk a little bit more about the sort of information environment that these voters live in. Well, Iran has certainly broken through. I mean, I wouldn't say that these voters listen to news 24 hours a day. There are a lot of things they don't know. You know, he's shown pictures of their representatives in Georgia. They don't know who they are.

Oh, that's interesting. But the war has broken through. And that's also because the war is affecting their daily lives. It's causing prices to go up. They understand that there's a connection between what's happening overseas and gas prices being high at the pump. there's an economic cost that people are being asked to pay for the war. And Donald Trump says it. He says, you know, it's a small price to pay for making sure Iran doesn't have a bomb. That's not something these voters agree with. Yeah. And in general, they believe it's just not worth it. They don't think all the money and all the resources and the focus that Trump is putting into this war is worth the time. One woman, she's a Republican. She said this clearly. She's like, I don't think this is worth it. Her name was Havidia. It just doesn't seem like it's has resulted in any. positive. I just haven't seen, I don't, I guess I don't have anything that's saying it's going poorly, but I have nothing to saying that's going positive. And I don't think the cost is worth what they're doing. Yeah. So she's one of those voters who isn't, I can't, you know, like, unlike Nick, she can't like tell you, I've been reading this in the New York Times and I see what's going on. She's like, in general, I'm just reading the room. And I get a sense that this isn't good for me.

This isn't going to help me in the future. And it's definitely not helping me now as I'm seeing oil prices rise. I mean, is that the economic connection completely? Is it just gas prices rising? Is there something broader about this economic connection? No, I think there's something broader. Joe talked about how he feels about the economy, and specifically talking about what Trump promised to do. He said day one, he was going to bring the prices down on eggs and other things. He's cut subsidies to health insurance, so that's gone up.

You know, I see my pocket book being hit, and he's building a new ballroom for some reason that we don't need. you know, how about you put some money toward us? How about you put some money toward us? I think that's the biggest takeaway. I mean, these are voters who were asked, what are Trump's priorities and do they align with your priorities? And that was his answer to that. In other words, no, they don't.

And, you know, the problem is that Donald Trump promised to do a lot of things about high prices. And he's done the opposite. This war is so inextricably linked with the major issue that voters think is important right now, which is the cost of living. I mean, just to say this again, because I think it was the theme of this conversation that these voters were having, which is it is distracting Trump. Like, Iran is distracting Trump from solving economic issues. It is not just that we're spending all these resources. It's that if he's focused on this, he's not focused on these other issues that are only getting worse.

No one thinks any part of their budget is getting better in recent months. And they don't think it's getting better in the future either. Well, that's what I was going to ask is it Trump's, it seems like. part of Trump's argument is this is short-term pain. A lot of what, I mean, this is the same argument about the tariffs, short-term pain for some sort of long-term gain. Do voters buy into that idea that things are going to get better at some point? No. And actually, there are a couple things that came up, especially related to AI, that seems to be like a pressure point for them or at least a looming anxiety about the economy. One, they're seeing job losses. This has come up in every focus group now for at least the past three that we've seen, the past three states we've heard from voters. They think that AI is going to lead to more job losses and they have already. And there were a couple questions in these focus groups about data centers.

You know, a lot of voters said that they're worried that the companies who run these data centers won't be taking on their fair share of energy costs. So it's like a mix of like anxieties here. It's present and then future. And Trump, in their view, seems pretty distracted. Every single one of these voters said that they feel more anxious now about the economy than they did when Trump came into office. again, the job of any president is to make voters, citizens feel safe and secure, not scared and anxious. So now it's the war.

It's Trump's behavior. It's the extreme posts. All of those things are making voters more anxious, not less. All right. Let's take a quick break and more on all of this in just a moment. And we're back. And Mara, all the people we're hearing from are people who voted for Donald Trump in 2024. How do they feel or how are they engaging with the promises he made on the

campaign trail now. Well, on some promises like closing the border, they feel pretty good about it. But on a lot of other promises, not only do they not feel that he's delivering, they feel he's doing the opposite. Here's Corey. So it's his priority with the war in Iran that that is not anything that I approve of. I prefer to take care of home first. And Dawn said almost the same thing. I just feel like he made a lot of promises about our economy. You know, make America first and be, you know, strong American, drill, baby, drill. All those kinds of things just domestic. We've heard this now in multiple focus groups where folks who were explicitly voting for Trump because he did not sound like a war hawk.

They feel particularly betrayed by that right now. It's come up at least two or three times now, which I think is interesting. But it's also interesting, you know, President Trump did also run heavily on this immigration promise. unauthorized crossings at the border are way down during his presidency. No doubt about that. How much credit is he getting for that or how much does that matter to these voters in terms of as they're weighing everything else? Well, this is the big question that we're going to be pursuing as we get closer to November every month with these different focus groups because they do give him credit. They like what he did on the border. They're not crazy about what he did in Minneapolis. They like what he did on the border. The question is, is that gratitude going to outweigh their anxiety about the war. and the economy, we don't know that. We don't know yet how their feelings about Trump will affect their votes for governor, congressman, senator.

And that's something we're going to be drilling down on with the future focus groups. I think what we're seeing is their frustration with everything else overshadowing how maybe happy they are about what's going on in the border. You know, in other focus groups, we heard voters say, you know, I'm really happy with the way that Trump is handling the border. But I feel like the further we've gotten into this year, the closer we get to the midterms, I'm hearing more. more and more people say, on the whole, disapprove of the job that Trump is doing, even though I am happy with what's happening on the border. And, you know, tell me if we're still going to be at war at the end of October. Tell me what gas prices are going to be at the pump. I mean, those are going to be the important data points that people are going to make their decisions on.

I mean, it is clear also in public polling about that the Iran war is not popular with America. There's nothing in these focus groups that contradicts public opinion. polling. It illustrates it. It doesn't contradict it. But what if they're unhappy with that, but what do they want Trump to focus on? I mean, I hear these kind of vague America first, that domestic things are there more? They want him to bring prices down. That's what they say over and over again. You said you'd bring prices down on day one. But instead, as our voter said, you're cutting health care. Prices are up. You don't seem to be paying attention to us because you're building a ballroom for some reason. I actually think that could be a big difference,

is just even if Trump was attempting, making the show of caring about the economy. Because right now every conversation is about his political enemies as usual, but then also his now foreign enemies abroad. It is a big frustration among voters that he's just not even talking about it. This is what they're talking about. This is what they care about. And they feel like the president, it's not even at the top of his list anymore. And I did hear at least one or two voters say that at one point, because part of the conversation that the voters had with Rich Tao, who was the moderator from Engages, who was, I'm talking to these folks during the focus groups. The question was, what do you think his priorities have been throughout his administration? And a lot of folks said, you know, I thought the economy and immigration was at some point. But now it sounds like none of that is at the top of his list. And that is where the rub is that is what they're most frustrated with is like they have these priorities and the president has seemingly different ones?

I mean, looking ahead to the midterms, is it fair to say like it's so interesting hearing from these voters in Georgia? Is it fair to say in a state like Georgia that these voters, you know, matter more than many other places? Well, the reason we pick these states is because they're battleground states. They have important Senate races or an important bunch of House races. Yeah, we've been to Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. This month we went to Georgia. Yeah, these are important states. This is where the House majority might be one or lost. This is where the Senate majority might be one or lost. So these are important states to follow. And they're also important in presidential elections. And these are states where elections are close. And when you have close elections and all it takes is a couple thousand votes here and there for for not just

house races but Senate races to swing. It is important what even small subsets of voters have to say. Yeah. And Georgia, just as a reminder for folks, has a lot of statewide races on the ballot this year. Governor, Senator, Secretary of State, Attorney General, I could go on and on. But we can leave it there for today. Tomorrow on the show, we will have our weekly news roundup. Don't miss it. Hit the follow button wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. Eliasson Senior National Political Correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.