Some Trump voters are sneaking away

[marmar]

Some Trump voters are sneaking away
They'll never admit they're wrong, but polling reveals quiet GOP regret

By Amanda Marcotte
Senior Writer
Published January 19, 2026 6:45AM (EST)


(Salon) A decade into our collective Donald Trump nightmare, most of the reality-based population has given up on hoping MAGA voters will wake up and see the light. We’ve come to realize that he could eat a live kitten on TV and they, unwilling to admit his critics were right all along, would argue that kitten was “antifa” and liberals are the ones who are stupid for not seeing the threat the kitten posed to our safety. I predicted this miserable state of affairs back in 2017, after interviewing psychology experts on cognitive dissonance. For Trump voters, the pain of saying “I was wrong” is too great. They would rather burn the country to the ground than accept fault. If anything, the worse Trump acts the harder they cling to him because the psychic price of saying “liberals were right all along” grows steeper.

....(snip)....

On Friday, data journalist G. Elliott Morris analyzed and compared the past year’s polls to Trump’s first term. “Backlash to Trump has been more severe in his second term,” he found. This is visible in many measures, from approval ratings to who people plan to vote for in the midterms. But the most telling statistic might be the number of people quietly dropping “Republican” from their self-identification. According to Morris, “Republican identification dropped from 46% in 2024 to just 40% in Q4 of 2025 — a 6-point decline, triple the 2-point drop during Trump’s first term.”

It’s still a small number, but it’s significant because it suggests people are starting to find it embarrassing to say they are Republicans. They’re looking for a way to distance themselves from Trump and the MAGA movement without admitting fault.

....(snip)....

It’s not very satisfying for those of us who spent the past decade warning folks that Trump really is a fascist liar, only to be dismissed as having “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” But if these folks were capable of true self-reflection and growth, they probably wouldn’t have been Trump voters to begin with. So this is what we have to settle for: at least a small number of them are feeling embarrassed enough to slink away and pretend that they were never that gung-ho Republican. ................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2026/01/19/some-trump-voters-are-sneaking-away/

[C_U_L8R]

1. Are you better off? Really?

I don’t think anyone can say that unless they’re part of the scheme…. like his thugs and cronies.

Even if magats don’t care that they’re ruining the country, they gotta feel kinda stupid every time they look at their bank accounts.

[SweepPicker]

2. Interesting

"It’s still a small number, but it’s significant because it suggests people are starting to find it embarrassing to say they are Republicans. They’re looking for a way to distance themselves from Trump and the MAGA movement without admitting fault."

I always thought people who were ashamed to call themselves Republicans claimed the title Libertarian?

[J_William_Ryan]

3. "...given up on hoping MAGA voters will wake up and see the light."

If Trump were to eat a live kitten on TV, Trump Cult members would claim that Trump was ‘just kidding’ and that Trump opponents ‘just don’t get Trump.’

And however gratifying for sane Americans the buyers’ remorse and backlash against Trump, the drop in numbers of those identifying as Republican, the country must nonetheless suffer another three years the Trump nightmare, helpless to bring the nightmare to an end.

Certainly those stupid enough, frightened enough, and so completely ignorant to vote for Trump are to blame – but the Founding Generation must bear the original blame: the consequence of their unwarranted fear of the people to not allow the people more direct access to the levers of power, failing to provide the people with the means by which to rid themselves of a malignant tyrant such as Trump.