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I’m Patrick Healy, the deputy editor of “New York Times” Opinion, and part of my job is running our focus groups.
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- margie omero
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Hi, everyone.
- speaker 1
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Hello.
- speaker 2
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Good evening.
- speaker 3
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Hello.
Recently, my co-moderator Margie and I sat down with 13 undecided independent voters.
- margie omero
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How would you describe Joe Biden as a person? Natalie.
- natalie
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It’s like he’s a little bit senile, and I do think it’s time to step down.
- margie omero
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All right. Megan, how about you?
- megan
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Disconnected.
- margie omero
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Richard, how about you?
- richard
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I would just describe him as unfit, unfit for the presidency.
They were from all over the country.
- margie omero
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How would you describe Donald Trump as a person? Lorraine.
- lorraine
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Conceited.
- margie omero
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OK, Ken.
- ken
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Self-righteous.
- speaker 4
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Narcissist.
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In 2020, independent voters broke strongly for President Biden. They helped Joe Biden flip Georgia and Arizona to the Democrats’ hands, which hadn’t happened in years. He won back Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, three states that Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in 2016.
We asked all of these undecided voters a bunch of questions, and I was trying to use their answers to figure out what messages might draw them to President Biden or Donald Trump when they decide who to vote for in November. I was also mentally sorting them as potential Trump voters or Biden voters.
- hal
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Evening, everybody. My name is Hal.
- gary
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I’m Gary.
- megan
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I’m Megan.
- yelena
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Hi, my name’s Yelena.
The focus group participant who intrigued me the most was Yelena. She had this surprising mix of positions, like a lot of independent voters do.
- yelena
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I live with my husband and my 18-month-old.
Yelena is Latina, 22 years old from Alabama.
- yelena
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My hobbies include going on runs, cooking, reading, honestly doing anything with my kid.
Now, Yelena was pretty critical of both Joe Biden and Donald Trump. And she told us she doesn’t see a lot of promise in four more years of either man as president.
- yelena
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None of these people remotely reach the standards of what the American people need. Joe Biden, I mean, I feel like we haven’t had a president these past four years, just someone that’s been spending my money wherever they want. And it’s just disgusting.
Most of the other participants in the focus group were with Yelena. They don’t see President Biden as a distinctive, effective leader. And Trump didn’t fare much better.
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But Yelena had felt, in a surprising way, that the country was more on its toes under President Trump, that it was more dynamic. She made this point about how President Trump started a conversation.
- yelena
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Sure it was divisive, and sure it really wasn’t the most productive, but it really highlighted the problems and the divisiveness that was already hidden inside of our country. At least people were having conversations. At least everything felt more exposed and out there.
- margie omero
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So I want to pause on that because I want to hear more. Can you tell me what those things were that were exposed?
- yelena
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So I’d say our border. We have to address our funding so people that want to come here legally are able to access us. But the infrastructure to support that program has people waiting 15, 20 years to get a legal green card, and that’s just ridiculous. The way he went about it was not the greatest, clearly, and it created a lot of divisiveness, but from that came a realization, I feel, that this is something that needed to be addressed.
I think she saw it as a sign of a country that was on its toes, that wasn’t averting its eyes from problems in its midst. And then I think she looked at President Biden and she saw someone who, for whatever reason, wasn’t as dynamic, wasn’t as engaged in those urgent conversations in identifying some of the problems with the country.
So I started thinking Yelena maybe would end up in Trump’s camp. But then we asked about abortion rights.
- yelena
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Abortion is health care. Abortion is not a religious belief. And that’s one of the better examples of how church and state has done a poor job at staying separated.
That sentiment is one that Democrats are banking on for the 2024 election, that Americans, particularly women, will be so upset about the reversal of Roe versus Wade, they’ll vote for Democrats. And we saw this in the 2022 midterms. And then she talked about her own personal experience with racism in Alabama and how she felt like racism had gotten worse when President Trump was in office.
- yelena
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This may sound silly, but I experienced a lot more racism due to him being president.
- patrick healy
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Yelena, [? may I ask, ?] could you give a specific example of something that happened to you?
- yelena
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Yeah, so, [CHUCKLES]: me and my mom, we were at a pizza restaurant. And the people in the booth next to us did not appreciate that we were speaking Spanish. And they called the manager over, and the manager over came to us.
And they were like, hey, if you can’t speak English, we’re going to have to ask you to leave. And as you can imagine, we left because we felt uncomfortable. And as we were leaving, it was followed up by comments of, go back to your country. Speak English. You’re in America. And so, that was a situation that is very fresh on my mind, unfortunately.
OK, so at this point, I had Yelena down as a Biden voter for sure. But then we asked everyone at the end —
- patrick healy
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If the election were held today, who would vote for Biden and who would vote for Trump? Raise your hand if you would vote for Biden. Daniel, Henry. I think that’s it. OK, and who would vote for President Trump? Hal, Gary, Megan, Richard, Natalie, Kim, Ken, Lorraine, Robin, Pablo, and Yelena. OK.
Yelena went with Trump. Despite the abortion issue and the racism she said she faced, Trump was her pick, because Yelena, like so many of these voters, had one big worry — the economy.
- margie omero
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I want folks to fill in the blank for me. Here’s the sentence to fill in — when I think about how things are going in the country right now, I’m most worried about, blank.
- speaker 5
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My word would be the economy.
- speaker 6
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Inflation.
- speaker 7
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Economy.
- speaker 8
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Economy.
- speaker 9
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Economy.
The economy is a big problem for Biden with independent voters. Yes, they see the statistics saying that the economy is getting better on several measures, but they’re not feeling it in their cost of groceries and their household costs in the way that they look at their own pocketbook now compared to when President Trump was in office.
In 2020, a lot of these independent voters wanted an end to President Trump’s extremism. They liked the unity and the concern about the soul of the nation that Joe Biden was talking about.
The question now is, how can President Biden win over and win back enough of these independent voters in these swing purplish states, especially those, like in our focus group, who are so concerned about the economy. And they hear President Biden talking about Bidenomics, talking about how the country is back and how the economy is back, and they don’t see that playing out in their own lives.
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