By Julia Harte
Sept 25 - Don Jernigan, a retiree in Virginia Beach, is disappointed by most politicians, Democrat and Republican. That includes President Donald Trump, whom he helped elect in 2024.
But Jernigan,
76, says he plans to “hold his nose” and vote for Republican candidates in November’s midterm elections. In his view, "the Democrats are now being controlled by the democratic socialists," he said, "and we’ve fought wars to keep that away from us.”
While many analysts argue that Trump's low approval ratings could dampen Republican turnout in November, conversations with 18 Trump voters, including Jernigan, suggest electoral victories by progressive Democrats have energized some conservatives - even those disappointed by Trump.
Conducted with a group of Trump voters who have spoken with Reuters regularly since he returned to office, the interviews do not point to broad enthusiasm for Republican candidates themselves.
Dissatisfaction with Republican nominees for national or statewide office was rife among the group, particularly among voters in battleground states with races that could prove pivotal in deciding which party controls Congress. Chief among their concerns were the Iran war and Trump's handling of the economy.
Even so, many of those critical of the president said they would do all they can to deny Democrats control of either house of Congress.
Nearly all of the 18 voters said they were alarmed by the prospect of far-left candidates winning more seats in Congress; many expressed deep concern that progressives, if elected in meaningful numbers, would attempt to enact what they view as a socialist - or even communist - agenda in which the government tightly restricted citizens’ choices about where to spend and earn money.
Seven said that concern alone left them more motivated to vote for a conservative candidate in November.
Trump and other Republicans have falsely accused Democrats of embracing communist ideology, a charge Democrats reject as a deliberate misrepresentation of their policies.
Democratic socialists advocate pursuing progressive policies, such as government-run universal health insurance or wealth taxes, through democratic processes. In contrast, communism seeks to abolish private ownership of property and create a classless society - ideas that the democratic socialists seeking election reject.
FEARS OF SOCIALISM AND SHARIA
In Georgia, where voters will elect a governor and US senator in November, David Ferguson said he hasn’t found any candidates in either party whom he can “strongly get behind” in the general election.
Yet Ferguson, 54, a mechanical engineer and account manager for an industrial supply company, said he fears that if progressive and socialist candidates got more power in Congress, they would try to exert “way too much control over markets and things that the government does not need to be involved in.”
On the other side of the state, near Savannah, insurance firm employee Amanda Taylor was so disappointed by this year’s candidates that she didn’t vote in Georgia’s primary election. But she said the rise of democratic socialists nationwide would “absolutely” help push her to the polls in November, even though she wasn't aware of any such candidates on her ballot.
Like Ferguson, Taylor, 53, worried such movements would pull the US “towards communism, where your government is dictating the groceries that you can get and you're waiting in lines for bread” and that they would require schools, bathrooms and sports teams to recognize the gender identity of transgender individuals.
Trump and other Republican leaders have pumped up their attacks on socialism and communism this campaign season after a series of left-wing Democratic primary victories, including a win by Michigan US Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, whom the president called a "Communist loser."
El-Sayed, who faces former US Representative Mike Rogers in November, describes himself as a progressive candidate and not a socialist.
But Trump's messaging appears to be sticking - even with Republicans unhappy with the party's leadership.
In Grand Rapids, Michigan, Terry Alberta said he expects to split his ballot between Democratic and Republican candidates in November, because he leans Republican but mistrusts any candidate with an endorsement from Trump, whom he sees as increasingly volatile and prone to “silly games” with other countries.
“I don't like the radicalism on either side,” said Alberta, 65, a pilot. He said his vote will also be motivated by concern that El-Sayed secretly supports policies he has publicly disavowed, such as imposing Islamic sharia law on the US.
STRATEGIC VOTING
Some voters in the group saw opportunity in the rising popularity of progressive candidates on the left. In Wisconsin’s August primary election, recent college graduate William Brown, 21, cast a "strategic" vote for Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist candidate, who narrowly lost her bid to become the state’s Democratic nominee for governor.
Had Hong won, Brown thought the Republican nominee could have defeated her more easily than a moderate Democrat - and her agenda seemed so radical that “not only would she not have been able to pass a lot of it through the legislature, but a lot of it would have been court challenged,” Brown said.
Others viewed the recent success of left-wing candidates as a warning sign about the increasingly extreme nature of US politics.
“My biggest fear is that it will be a constant impeachment of Donald Trump," said Lesa Sandberg of St. George, Utah, who runs an accounting business, rents properties and works for a Republican political action committee.
Sandberg, 58, expects the Senate to remain under Republican control, preventing new progressive US representatives from actually pushing through a socialist agenda. But for the sake of national unity, she said, she hopes Democrats “won't elect their extreme left, just like I hope we don't elect our extreme right.”
(Reporting by Julia Harte; editing by Paul Thomasch and Deepa Babington)
