{"id":230104,"date":"2026-11-08T07:39:22","date_gmt":"2026-11-08T07:39:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/flip-voters-discovered-that-trumps-racism-and-xenophobia-are-expensive-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-11-08T07:39:22","modified_gmt":"2026-11-08T07:39:22","slug":"flip-voters-discovered-that-trumps-racism-and-xenophobia-are-expensive-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/flip-voters-discovered-that-trumps-racism-and-xenophobia-are-expensive-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Flip voters discovered that Trump\u2019s racism and xenophobia are expensive – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maga\u2019s regret voters were all-in for Trump\u2019s racism. Then they found out they couldn\u2019t afford it
F<\/span>or the first time in a decade, election predictions far exceeded public expectations. What pollsters anticipated as a blue wave<\/a> billowed into a blue tsunami<\/a>. Wins that held ground for already blue seats eased nerves, and the flips of swing states like Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina and Ohio energized the blue base. But red-belt-busting wins in Republican strongholds like Texas, South Carolina and Kansas alongside pending races<\/a> in Alaska and Mississippi left mouths agape. The explanation was that Democrats turned out far more supporters than their regulars, and that the \u201cregret voter<\/a>\u201d (both swing voters and partisan Republicans) expanded the wave across districts Trump previously won<\/a>. Elation and sighs of relief rolled over consistently Democratic voters who suffered multiple sucker punches from recent years of Republican upsets. Regret voters, who run the gamut from gen Z<\/a> <\/strong>men<\/a> to Latinos<\/a>, farmers<\/a> and the white working class<\/a>, hope a different party can deliver on the economy Trump promised them.
Blue voters look at the dismantling of democracy, multiple wars, mass deportations and Trump\u2019s unchecked power in these last two years and see how it all could have been avoided. Regret voters, however, either co-signed or conceded to Trump\u2019s naked racism and brutish bullying of marginalized people, but switched their votes as soon as the consequences hit their pockets. While some of the president\u2019s backers may have been turned away by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) gunning down American citizens, the final straw for most wasn\u2019t ICE\u2019s brutality<\/a>, but rather the price of eggs. Some may have been upset by the Tomahawk missile assault that killed 120 schoolgirls<\/a> in Iran, but most fumed at the rocketing costs at the gas pump that followed. Few demanded answers for the nearly 60 deaths<\/a> of innocent people detained in DHS detention centers since the start of 2024, but many felt scorned by lost immigrant labor that cut into owners\u2019 profit margins. Maga\u2019s regret voters were all-in for Trump\u2019s racism. Then they found out they couldn\u2019t afford it.
Since Trump\u2019s arrival in 2016, political discourse has been dominated by a narrative<\/a> that the president galvanized particularly white voters whose economic anxiety went ignored<\/a> by the left and much of the elite political establishment. It wasn\u2019t completely true. Researchers found that status threat anxiety<\/a> derived from an increasing majority-minority demographic shift also anchored their voting choices. In the 2026 Maga exodus, however, brass-tacks items like affordability, tariffs and rising inflation are consistently top of mind over other concerns.
Through focus groups across hundreds of Trump\u2019s supporters, political consultant and former Republican Sarah Longwell<\/a> spotted the immediate trend. \u201cThe first thing we do is ask people: how do you think things are going in the country?\u201d Longwell said. \u201cAnd every focus group, every single time, doesn\u2019t matter \u2013 whether left, right or center \u2013 right now, people say: bad. And then they immediately start talking about the prices of something.\u201d Underlying economic angst even determined the degree of attention and priority regret voters gave to other issues like the Trump family\u2019s corruption<\/a>. \u201cEverything comes back to people\u2019s relationship to the economy,\u201d Longwell said<\/a>. \u201cTrump voters and more low-information voters would probably let Trump get away with corruption. In fact, we know they would \u2013 he was doing a lot of corrupt things in his first term.\u201d
Maga voters looked past unchecked government corruption and abuses of power until it affected them financially. While voters were magnetized by Trump\u2019s campaign promises<\/a> to lower prices, the effects of his economic plans worsened affordability<\/a> for moderate- to low-income Americans and cut $1tn<\/a> from essential social safety net services like Snap<\/a>. He simultaneously pushed a unilateral increase in tariffs, which policy wonks and economists insisted had \u201cno basis in economic reality<\/a>\u201d and would drastically increase the cost of goods.
His pitches to his base two years ago sounded an awful lot like he murmured \u201clower prices\u201d and barked his priorities to mass-deport<\/a> immigrants, gut research and diversity initiatives<\/a>, and wage an all-out war<\/a> against gender-nonconforming Americans, including children. Trump\u2019s rhetoric that immigrants take<\/a> American jobs, access social services such as healthcare for free<\/a>, and are a drag on the economy are tried-and-tested conservative dog-whistle tactics<\/a> that mask deliberate xenophobia and anti-immigrant violence as a commonsense protection of Americans\u2019 bottom lines. That dog-whistling further conditions those who embrace Maga ideologies to mark racialized groups as threats to the economic resources to which they feel entitled.
At an ICE job fair in Arlington, Texas, on 2 September 2025, an IT specialist named Aaron Ely told a Washington Post<\/a> reporter that his private-sector career stalled because the job market was crowded with cheaper and higher-skilled south Asian candidates. Maga and ICE\u2019s racial profiling, surveillance and harassment of immigrants provided an easy solution for eliminating the competition. \u201cI keep seeing these memes where Indians are bragging about taking our tech jobs,\u201d said Ely, 36, while explaining his motivations for joining the agency. \u201cWell, I\u2019m going to work with guys that are going to arrest you, slam your face on the pavement, and send you home.\u201d It wasn\u2019t the price of milk, but a chance to milk state-sanctioned racial violence for his personal advantage that drew Ely to Trump\u2019s policies.
But regret voters\u2019 financial motives also provide Democrats a valuable lesson, one that the most successful social movements against the most ironclad regimes learned long ago: economic exigencies transfer power from governments to everyday people. When the anti-apartheid movement strategized their first boycotts<\/a> in 1959, Black South Africans knew that the white Boer regime<\/a> that occupied and brutalized them was first and foremost a capitalist enterprise. The human-rights atrocities of apartheid were meaningless to its profit motives. Over the course of 35 years, Black South Africans organized the \u201cApartheid Kills \u2013 Look at the Label\u201d campaign, in which everyday consumers and vendors were asked to boycott products and goods from South Africa. After a union of Black longshoremen<\/a> in California refused to offload <\/a>South African cargo in 1984, the boycott electrified globally and turned the Boers into bad business<\/a>, bringing apartheid to its knees a decade later.
The economic motive behind millions of regret voters\u2019 actions on Tuesday should remind us that what hits their pockets will hit the polls. Targeting the economics behind the politics is echoed<\/a> in movements today<\/a>, even those that seem daunting and impossible to win. \u201cI don\u2019t believe that our people power comes from moral arguments,\u201d said<\/a> Randa Abdel-Fattah, an Australian lawyer and Palestinian human rights advocate. \u201cBlack people have proven that to us \u2026 It\u2019s about making genocide unprofitable.\u201d
Millions of Americans are fired up by the blue tsunami. It\u2019s the largest and perhaps only comprehensive, nationwide gain many of our collective populist movements for social justice, civil liberties and human-rights causes have seen in a decade that has been a reign of terrorfor us, and just a financial setback for others. Racism, \u201cwokeness\u201d and Islamophobia alone never changed their hearts and minds, nor are they even the main reason they regret their votes. \u201cHearts and minds\u201d don\u2019t shift balances of power, but power always shifts when it no longer pays.<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maga\u2019s regret voters were all-in for Trump\u2019s racism. Then they found out they couldn\u2019t afford itFor the first time in a decade, election predictions far exceeded public expectations. What pollsters anticipated as a blue wave billowed into a blue tsunami. Wins that held ground for already blue seats eased nerves, and the flips of swing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":230105,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}