LEXINGTON, Va. – President Donald Trump’s poll numbers are a bit all over the place these days. According to the averages, he is about seven points under water, while some studies show him as much as 19 points. And then one poll, the most accurate of 2024, shows him one point higher at 50%.
Similarly, a large majority of Americans say in polls that they want all illegal immigrants deported, but a large majority also say the Trump administration is going too far in implementing this policy.
What do the American people actually want?
Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger has terminated agreements between state law enforcement agencies and federal immigration authorities. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
I traveled to Lexington, Virginia, to get a sense of what the reality is, beneath these shaky and inconsistent poll numbers, and what I found was good news and bad news for both parties and a midterm that is still wide open.
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Brian, from nearby Lynchburg, was visiting town with his wife Erin. He is a chef in his early fifties and a former Republican. He finds Trump’s rudeness and what he would call his racism, such as the recent social media post depicting the Obamas as monkeys, a dealbreaker.
Brian was very interesting because while he knew he couldn’t tolerate Trump, he was also quite candid about the negative tradeoffs of voting for Democrats. As a business owner, when I asked him about Virginia’s new governor, Abigail Spanberger, his answer was telling.
“I voted for her,” Brian told me. “Part of me wished I didn’t have to do that, but I did it anyway, given the alternative.”
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The alternative here seemed to be Trump, not former Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears, Spanberger’s real opponent, and something every Republican should consider distancing themselves from Trump. It probably won’t work anyway.
I pressed Spanberger a bit and asked Brian if the wave of new taxes she supports worries him.
“It definitely concerns me,” he said. “I’m a fiscal conservative. I have to balance my budget, and the government should do that too. But if the alternative is racism, then I have to reject that.”
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It doesn’t matter that Earle-Sears is African American. Brian was the perfect example of why Democrats focus so much on race and racial issues. For some voters, perceived racism on the part of the president will even trump their own policy beliefs and preferences and tarnish the party he governs.
This phenomenon may also seem like fool’s gold to pollsters who see that a voter with conservative leanings should be available. But some, like Brian, will never support Trump or the Republican party as long as Trump leads them.
Former Virginia Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears and President Trump (Al Drago/Getty Images; Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
As Brian put it bluntly, “If it’s men in women’s sports or racism, I have to side with men in women’s sports.”
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But it wasn’t all bad news for Trump in rural Virginia. Alice, in her forties and working in the real estate sector, thinks Trump’s economic measures are starting to pay off.
“I can just feel it,” she told me. “Gasoline prices are low, there are more things for sale in the supermarket. We voted for that.”
When I asked about Trump’s gruff manner, which bothered Brian so much, she just said, “If you’re not used to it by now, you’re not going to get used to it.”
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Others, like Peter, in his seventies and retired, feel a real political fatigue. Apathy is the wrong word, but perhaps frustration is appropriate.
“Today it’s like who you vote for is your entire identity,” he said. “But I can’t fall out of a tree every time Donald Trump opens his mouth.”
On Friday afternoon, a small protest of mostly older white people gathered on a street corner in beautiful Lexington. Annette, the leader and spokesperson, handed out cookies. Unlike their colleagues in Minneapolis, they liked to talk to the press.
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“This is what we feared all along,” a man holding the Virginia state flag with the motto Sic Semper Tyrannis told me about the Trump administration’s treatment of Minneapolis. “That’s why we’ve been protesting here for a year.”
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In general, the massive shifts that pollsters so fervently seek seem to exist more in the world of numbers than in that of flesh and blood, where it is still very rare to meet someone who has changed their mind politically in the age of Trump.
No, the fear for Republicans today is not that Trump or the party will lose support. It’s that Democrats on the ground seem far more motivated to stop Trump than Republican voters are to reward slow and steady progress.
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Importantly, there appears to be nothing Trump could do, no position he could soften, whether on immigration enforcement, tariffs or his own rhetoric, that will sway the third of voters who loathe the man. But both Trump and the party have proven they can win without them.
From now until the midterm elections, we’ll be in the field with our ears to the ground, listening to the things voters never tell the pollsters. And if Lexington is any indication, this is still everyone’s business.
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