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BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich. (AP) – Jill Mott does not like tweets. The hard line at the border is too hard. And when asked if she will vote for President Donald Trump a second time, she lets out a long, deep sigh.
"That's the question," said Mott, a Republican from the suburbs of Detroit.
In his moment of hesitation, Mott is portraying a slice of voters, small but significant, ready to exert considerable influence in the 2020 presidential campaign. That is the 18% voters who described themselves as only "rather" favoring the president.
This is a group whose support for Trump is the most tenuous and whose reservations about his personality and politics reveal early signs for Republicans, perhaps even more when he circles his request for a US-Mexican border wall leading to a budget stalemate with Congress that closed the government towards Christmas.
An analysis of VoteCast, a national survey of more than 115,000 mid-term voters conducted by NORC at The Associated Press at the University of Chicago, highlights these divides.
Compared to the 27% of voters who describe themselves as powerful supporters of Trump, Trump's "somewhat" voters are much more likely to disagree with Trump on key issues such as immigration and health care, and to express differing opinions on a need. for a border wall, gun control and climate change. They are much more likely to question his credibility and temperament.
They are less likely to say they are conservative, less likely to be evangelical Christians, and more likely to have voted for Democrats in 2018. They are more educated, a little more likely to be. to be women and more likely to live in the suburbs.
"The most serious problem, how it presents itself," said Mott, a 52-year-old occupational therapist, who expressed concern last week during a break in Christmas shopping in front of the Gucci store in the luxury shopping center Somerset Collection. She is also concerned about the President's fiery approach to immigration.
"I understand what he wants – try to prevent any criminal activity," said Mott, highlighting Trump's speech about a caravan of Latin American asylum seekers migrants to the American border. "However, I think it could do a lot better by showing some interest for these people, offering short-term help."
As Trump enters his third year in office and concentrates more and more on his own re-election, he pays little attention to the need to support voters such as Mott.
Nonetheless, Trump's political future will depend on his ability to maintain support, particularly among the more educated and affluent suburban women who have ignored their concerns about Trump two years ago. and who will be invited to do it again in 2020. helped Trump to clear his way to the presidency across the industrial Midwest, but with a very small margin of error. The president won Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania with less than 80,000 combined votes.
VoteCast found that 16% of those who "rather" supported Trump's work decided to vote for Democracy House candidates in mid-November. This is compared to 6% of those who identified themselves as "powerful" Trump supporters.
This difference allowed the Democrats to seize the majority in the House, obtaining 21 out of 40 seats in the districts that Trump had won two years ago. Trump's overturned districts include the 8th Michigan Congress, a mid-sized American suburban strip between Detroit and Lansing.
Dozens of recent interviews in the region show that most of Trump's reluctant supporters are unwilling to turn his back on him or his party.
Michael Bernstein voted for Trump in 2016 and said that he would probably do it again in 2020. Bernstein, 52, points out that the economy and Trump's success in getting judges approved for the Supreme Court of the United States prove that he has chosen the right candidate, but the auto freelance writer from the Detroit suburb could get along with part of what Trump brings.
"He is supposed to represent the country and the people who do not like it," Bernstein added. "He does not do it, he prefers to play in the mud."
The November elections, however, show signs of erosion. In the 8th congressional district of Michigan, Republican Mike Bishop was ousted by new Democrat Elissa Slotkin, who attributed his victory in part to Trump's skeptical supporters.
"That's partly why we won: those voters who kept an open mind, who never really liked tweeting, chaos and vitriol who thought maybe the president would become more presidential, "Slotkin said in an interview.
"We had a lot of voters who said that I was the first Democrat for which they voted," she said. "They do not necessarily become democrats – they just voted for the candidate who best represents their values."
The VoteCast analysis suggests that a significant portion of these cautious supporters of Trump share some views with Democrats of the Trump era.
About half of Trump's "more or less" supporters said that Trump had the good temperament to effectively assume the duties of president or to consider him as honest and trustworthy.
Regarding health care, reluctant supporters are more likely to think that the government should make sure that all Americans are covered and less likely to think that the President's Health Care Act Barack Obama should be completely repealed.
Trump's reluctant supporters are also much more concerned about climate change than other Trump supporters and are more likely to call for tougher firearms laws.
Immigration revealed another clear fracture of the Trump coalition.
Most Trump supporters support the construction of the border wall, but only 32 percent of its supporters favor it, compared to 80 percent of its powerful supporters.
While 60% of Trump supporters said that immigrants living illegally in the United States should be deported, about 6 out of 10 reluctant supporters said that these immigrants should have the opportunity to apply for legal status.
However, it is not safe to assume that Trump's reluctant supporters will give up the president on his re-election in 2020, said Republican pollster Frank Luntz, who is also skeptical of Trump.
"They rejected the Democrats, but they do not fully embrace Trump, so the question is whether they stay with Trump or stay at home," Luntz said. .
Republican leaders are aware of divisions within Trump's support base, but few expect Trump to moderate his tone or his politics to appeal to hesitant supporters. Some hope that he will learn to center his message on the economy.
About 90% of Trump supporters still support his management of the economy, and 8 out of 10 say he is a strong leader, he brings the necessary change to the government and he defends what he says. ;he believes.
"Of course, there are sometimes frustrations, but I know that I have more money in my salary, more people are working in our community, the values of the house are rising" said Theresa Mungioli, chair of the GOP of Oakland County, Michigan, where Republicans lost two seats in Congress this fall.
She acknowledged that some mid-term voters, particularly women, could have undermined Trump's leadership, particularly with respect to security issues.
"Maybe partly because the president can be – like to bluff in his negotiations, which suggests that we are on the verge of war," said Mungioli. "This kind of instability was something that voters expressed."
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