A test of Trump's coalition

Today on Today Explained, I.

Miles Bryan, colleague, producer, reporter.

What's up?

I'm here to take you on a field trip today, Noelle, to the beating heart of American politics.

The East Wing of the White House.

No.

A provocative group chat.

We're going to New Jersey.

New Jersey.

Yes, New Jersey.

The Garden State's electing a governor in just about two weeks.

And, you know, Jersey is usually a blue state, but this race is really tight.

They're neck and neck.

And the Dems thought they were picking a safe choice.

You know, their candidates, moderate, suburban, but she's really struggled to win over working-class voters, especially the Latino voters who defected to Trump en masse in the presidential election last year.

You're mad at Trump, but you don't like the Democrats either.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.

Intriguing.

I'm going to hang up and listen.

Coming up on Today Explained, Trump's coalition is finally getting tested at the ballot box.

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Hey, Miles.

What's up?

Good to see you.

Like the stash.

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Oh, no, no.

I'm Miles Bryan, Today Explained producer and reporter, and today guest host.

I'm with Fox politics correspondent correspondent Christian Paz.

He wrote shotgun as we drove all across New Jersey, covering that state's governor's race.

It's a bellwether for how voters across the country are going to approach the midterms.

Christian, today we're in New Jersey to cover the New Jersey governor's race, right?

Tell us a little bit about who's running.

We have, on one hand, the Democrat is Mikey Sherrill.

She is a congresswoman from New Jersey.

She is a retired Navy helicopter pilot.

She is a lawyer.

She's kind of like your standard moderate Democrat.

She was elected in 2018 during that blue wave year

and this race has gotten really competitive.

And she is at the moment seemingly struggling a bit after the primaries where she struggled a bit with black and Latino voter support, seeing some similar struggles in that enthusiasm among those communities in the state.

And she's facing a pretty strong and well-run and disciplined campaign from the Republican candidate who is Jack Chitterelli.

He's known in the state.

He ran for governor four years ago.

And he almost won, right?

He lost only by three points against Phil Murphy.

We're here to cover this race because it tells us something about where the country's at about a year into President Trump's second term.

But we're really focused on Trump's coalition, the one that he came out of 2024 with, which included a lot of black and especially Latino voters who shifted right and voted for Trump maybe for the first time, or maybe for the first time they voted Republican.

A big question I have, Christian, is: are these voters, are they Republicans now or are they just Trump voters?

Are they going to come back to the Democratic Party or have they permanently moved away?

Yeah, that's something that's been a question on my mind for a long time too, especially because we see like in off-cycle midterm election years that voters who voted for Trump in a a presidential year don't necessarily seem as excited to vote for a non-Trump candidate or are simply not paying attention to politics as much or disengaged.

And maybe that vote for Trump might have been a unique vote that they decided to make that specific presidential year.

Keep that door open.

Our first stop was a rally for the Democrat in the race.

Mikey Sherl.

Good afternoon, good afternoon, everyone.

Saludo, saluno, saluno, saluma.

For the folks that don't speak Spanish, saluno means

The rally was a classic campaign stop.

There were free pastries, the music was too loud.

Excited for this.

A bunch of elected officials making two-minute speeches.

Folks, where there's diversity, there's strength.

And where there's strength, there's Mikey.

It was old school retail politics, but it also felt a bit like a flashback to Trump's first term, or even the Obama era, where this was just another race and not a tea leaf that everybody following politics is looking at for an answer about where these extremely abnormal feeling times might be going next.

The people in the room, though, they're still the ground troops of local races.

They knock on doors, they distribute flyers, they talk to voters.

And so we wanted to ask them, what are they hearing from those voters, especially Latino ones who voted for Trump?

Well, I hear a lot of regrets.

Really?

Well, give me your name, Emma, then tell me more.

I'm Senator Nilsa Cruz-Perez.

I represent the fifth legislative district in New Jersey.

So a lot of people who probably did not come out and vote, all Latinos that decided to vote on the

last election on the wrong side, now they're seeing what's happening in this country, and it's unacceptable the way our community is being treated.

So a lot of people are actually realizing, oops, we made a mistake.

There was a lot of false promises.

So elections have consequences.

Now we're paying the consequences.

Is there something that you're doing that's just different than how you campaigned in last year's presidential election?

What has changed?

We can no longer take people for granted.

We got to go back to the grassroots organizations.

And that's why all these people who are running in office right now are knocking on doors, are telling people, and we're telling the story and we're actually outreaching to the people.

Maybe

we did too stuff for granted.

Maybe we forgot those grassroots organizations that actually are the ones who are the movers and the shakers in our communities.

And now we're door by door telling people, you don't have to be afraid, elect the right people into office so we can protect your benefits, we can protect your family, we can protect the services you're receiving from the government.

So, one tactical change: Democrats are acknowledging that maybe they took some of these voters for granted.

This year, there's a sense of needing more focus.

But the question is: once you reach them, what is that focus?

Do you just let Trump's second term speak for itself, or do you tailor the message?

I don't know if you're right.

We got to ask Mikey Sherrill, the Dem candidate for governor, about that after she finished some voter gladhanding.

Yeah, so I think what we're seeing in the Latino community is actually what I'm seeing in a lot of working-class communities, this sense that costs are too high.

And I think the reason that we're going to see Latinos

come home, really, in this one, is because of those costs, because Trump is raising costs on everyone.

When she says come home, she means come home to the Democratic Party.

Cheryl is encapsulating what a lot of Democrats seem to have learned from the last year, that they need to be laser-focused on affordability and prices.

And she's not assuming Latino voters trust her party on these issues.

They're still looking for someone who's really going to address their core issues, and they've not found it in the Democratic Party, and they've not found it in the Republican Party.

And so, what I'm saying is, like, look, I hear you.

Here's my record.

Here's who I've always focused on and how I've done it.

And so this is my plan.

And I think it's going to really focus on those exact things you're talking to me about.

But one of the big questions of this election is whether a moderate, suburban, safe candidate like Cheryl can convince Latino voters who flip for Trump that she knows their pain.

This is like a huge bar, pub venue.

There's a disco ball.

There is a, yeah.

Republican Jack Chidarelli is working hard to make sure Latinos do not come home to the Democrats in this race.

He's doing that by doing events in places like Elizabeth, mostly Latino town in North Jersey, that shifted towards Trump by about 30 percentage points last year.

That's sort of a high school dance before I get started by.

Oh, yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking.

For me, it was like I'm part of the first wave that arrives at the college formal.

The event felt very new Republican Party.

It was more working class and more diverse.

There was an African-American guy wearing a Blacks for Trump hat, a teacher complaining about her union, a union construction worker asking about care for his autistic son.

Jack Chitterelli has tried to keep his race hyper local.

His dumb speech is light on Trump and deportations and heavy on New Jersey's high cost of living, high taxes, high electric bills.

I'm not telling you how to heat your home.

I'm not telling you what appliances you have to buy.

There'll be no wind farms off our Jersey shore.

And in the supermarket, if you'd like, you can have back your plastic bags.

Part of Chitterelli's platform is reversing a statewide ban on plastic bags.

I can talk about lowering taxes.

I get a nice little round of applause.

I say I'm bringing back the plastic bags.

It brings down the house every single time.

By focusing on kitchen table issues, Tittorelli is trying to treat Latinos like any other group of working-class voters, similar to his opponent in that way.

And while he still supports the president, he tries to put some distance between the way Trump talks about immigrants and the way he does.

So here in Elizabeth, we know we have a very large Hispanic Latino population, and they remind me very much of my grandparents when they first immigrated here.

Pro-family, going to church on Sundays, taking care of their families, working hard, and starting their own business.

Chiddarelli doesn't need to win all the Latinos who voted for Trump last year to win his election, but he needs some of them.

So, one question is: will all that's happened in the last 10 months, the detentions and deportations, the families split up, the videos passed around, will it all be less important than the economy or New Jersey's high cost of living when those voters go to the polls?

Christian and I tried to talk to a bunch of voters on the streets of Camden and Elizabeth.

We got a lot of no's.

We talked to people who didn't know there was an election happening at all.

Did you know there was a race until I brought it up in November?

We talked to a lot of people who voted for Trump last year and were upset about how things were going.

Definitely, that was my worst mistake on my political life.

But hadn't really tuned back into politics yet.

Right now with the candidates, I don't know much about those, but I wanted to hear the news on this couple weeks before the election day.

And we talked to some voters who are up in the air.

Is anybody going to vote?

Anyone want to do an interview?

Giselle is a home health aide in South Jersey.

We met her in Camben as she was grabbing something to eat.

She immigrated from Nicaragua, became a citizen this year.

We aren't going to use her last name because she's anxious about talking politics as a new citizen in this moment.

Giselle liked Trump last year because of his promises to crack down on crime and high prices.

Maybe you could ask her to tell us a bit about what she thinks of how he's done so far.

She told us she's been happy with Trump's approach to law and order, but costs are still too high, and tariffs seem to be making them worse.

She told us she was definitely going to vote in the governor's race this year, and at first she said she was open to voting for whomever could get prices down.

But even as we were talking, she started rethinking that.

These days, she carries her passport card everywhere she goes, in case she gets stopped by ICE.

And you have to carry that all the time.

Yeah.

Because you worry that someone's going to stop you and ask you.

That actually, actually, she's like, the more that I do think about it and the more recent stuff, the more aggressive actions,

that does give me pause, it does make me hesitate.

Yeah.

What?

She said, like, taking people away from their families or treating them violently when they're detaining them.

She's like, I guess I would be okay with prices remaining the same if it meant like not being so physically aggressive with people and giving them a chance to defend themselves or make the case I'm just saying.

Thank you, ma'am.

I was not waiting on the data.

Take care.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Oh my God.

Okay.

I feel like the thing that became clear to me is that the Latino voters we talked to, by and large, were unhappy with Trump and how this year has gone.

But, you know, I keep thinking about how Mikey Sherrill, the Democratic nominee, said Latinos were going to come home.

And that's not the sense I got from the people we talked to, right?

Yeah, there wasn't a sense of like righteous anger or like

activation or mobilization per se.

Right.

It's like

we asked the question, you know, are these Latina voters Republicans now?

And it seems like the answer is no,

but it doesn't mean they're Democrats either.

That's, it's kind of still up in the air.

Yeah, absolutely.

Great.

Well, next time I see you, we'll be in this studio, right?

And you're going to tell us what it all means, who's going to win this election and the midterms and the next presidential presidential election and what the future of the country will look like right yeah all the secrets will be revealed

coming up

okay cool that was yeah

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Today explained.

Christian, we're back.

We're in our comfort zones now.

We're in our respective studios.

And I'm glad to be back with you because you spend most of your time covering national politics and national polling data for Vox.

How does what we heard on our little reporting trip, you know, stack up with the rest of the country?

So, what we heard on the reporting trip is a lot like the story that the national data is telling us.

An overwhelming majority of Republicans and conservatives still like what they're seeing from Trump.

They might not be as enthusiastic about it as they were closer to his inauguration before it all started to actually happen.

But Trump is losing support the most from the groups that he did best with in 2024 compared to the last time.

So that's like young people and it's Hispanic and Latino voters.

It's largely a big surprise to do with the economy and personal finances.

So that's like how people feel about prices, how people feel about inflation, how people feel about rent, about wages.

Those are the biggest risk to Trump's alliance from 2024.

The increase in rent, before you used to pay probably $900 right here, now you have to pay $2,500.

And it's a lot.

$5,6K to live modestly.

The more modest you are, the less you really have to make.

What is the best thing about New Jersey?

Nothing.

Nothing.

At a point in time, you're just like, where can we get help from?

You know, you were on Today Explained back in the spring talking about Trump's softening support among his newer coalition members, notably Latino voters.

And I got to say, it's kind of surprising to me that opinion hasn't swung more considering how intense and explicit and aggressive the Trump Trump administration's immigration actions have been since then.

Being arrested by ICE agents in plain clothes.

We've seen these viral videos.

I would think that would move the needle more.

I feel like there's a few ways to, a few explanations here.

I mean, important to note from the start, two things, that if you were supporting Trump for economic reasons, the main reason you'd be turned off from him would be over what he's done on the economy or has not done, not necessarily other issues.

Those other issues would be kind of like on top of that.

Economic issues were always the top concern for this cohort of voters.

Immigration issues came second or third after that.

But if you were thinking about immigration as the main reason that you were supporting Trump, it's probably

because you wanted some kind of middle approach.

We need more federal agents

to protect the citizens and also to protect the people who are trying to come here legally.

There's bad apples in any, anywhere in the world.

Get those bad apples.

Maybe they don't necessarily want ICE rounding up everybody.

They don't want families to be separated.

You know, they don't want people's rights to be trampled on or disrespected, but there's still kind of an understanding that there needs to be some kind of enforcement action to deport certain undocumented immigrants.

You know, in our Car Ride Out reporting, you referred to Mikey Sherrill as a 2018-style Democrat, a term you and I've seen other political reporters use to describe the moderate, maybe kind of boring candidates that helped Dems win big in the midterms that year.

But now Cheryl's race is tight.

You know, what does that say about the Democratic strategy right now in Trump 2.0?

It's a big question.

I think that's what a lot of folks are wondering.

And specifically, it's like an open question about just what the strategy should be.

There's another governor's race in Virginia, and it's, I think, not a coincidence that the Democratic candidates in both states were elected to the House in that 2018 blue wave.

A new poll in the closely watched race for governor of Virginia shows the Democratic candidate with a comfortable lead.

I'm Abigail Stanberger.

After 9-11, I walked the halls of CIA as a case officer working counterterrorism.

And then I walked the halls of Congress, where despite the dysfunction, I got things done and was named the most bipartisan member of Congress from Virginia.

Maybe that's part of why we feel that 2018 style.

One of the things that helped in 2018 was primarily running like anti-Trump threats to democracy.

Orange Man bad.

Orange Man bad.

You know, talking about the threats that Trump poses, talking about how bad Trump is.

That's what worked in 2018.

We have realized what it takes to make our democracy truly special, and it is each and every one of us.

This is a very significant defeat for Mr.

Trump, a historic accomplishment for the Democrats.

There's now a check on Donald Trump.

And that is great news for America.

And it seems like it's had diminishing returns over the years.

That's where we see a little bit of a gulf between where the national Democrats are and maybe what their most energized base voters want, which is leaders who take risks.

They want people who can do the real talk, who seem authentic, and who will energize and excite them to fight back.

You know, when we were out in Jersey, Cheryl's supporters seemed like they thought she could be a good governor, that they thought she could win, but she didn't seem to be like plucking the heartstrings or firing up the base's anger and frustration and excitement.

It felt more dutiful.

Totally.

And I think if you ask outside observers, they would present a contrast between the tried and true 2018 style, anti-incumbent approach of Cheryl and the Democratic candidate in Virginia, Abigail Spanberger, and then maybe like a newer generation post-pandemic, post-2024 style Democrat in terms of like just across the river, Zora and Mamdani in New York City.

I don't think that we should have billionaires.

Or even up in Maine, where we're seeing a primary take shape between an establishment pick and an energetic Grand Platiner outsider candidate who's rallying voters.

with that kind of energy maybe that some of the Democratic base is asking for.

I'm not afraid to name an enemy, And the enemy is the oligarchy.

It's the billionaires who pay for it, the politicians who sell us out.

What are Zoran Mamdani and Graham Plattner doing that's that's getting people stoked in a way that you know Mikey Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger aren't?

I mean they are candidates that are trying to expand the tent even more in a way that might upset centrists or moderates, right?

They are talking plainly.

You know, they're adapting to social media and different forms of campaigning too.

That's something that we're seeing in other races across the country where we're just starting to see younger candidates or candidates who are more adept at using social media to talk about their candidacies, challenging Democratic incumbents.

Let's end this where we started: New Jersey.

What happens in the governor's race there in two weeks is going to set the national narrative to some extent ahead of the midterms.

What might that narrative look like depending on the different outcomes?

There's at least maybe three narratives that we can

examine.

I mean, the first one is, what happens if Mikey Sherlow wins big?

I think from there, it's pretty easy to draw conclusions that that 2018 style of politics actually does work and that Trump is doing enough to keep his new members of his coalition away from voting for a Republican down ballot.

The second one is that Mikey Sherrill wins by a little bit.

It's a sign that next year might end up being a much bigger and more intense competition, that it's not a 2018 snow blue wave, that maybe Democrats are able to pick up a few seats, are able to use some of this anti-Trump energy, but maybe not enough to flip control of the House of Representatives like they did during Trump's first term.

And scenario number three.

This is Chitterelli winning, you know, by just a little bit.

It probably wouldn't be a huge victory because it's still New Jersey, but I think that's the scenario where you're suddenly seeing that maybe the 2024 Trump coalition can come out just enough to support a non-Trump-like candidate.

Where the 2018-style approach that Democrats have used did not work, that might end up fueling additional and fighting additional competition among Democrats ahead of midterms next year.

Christian Paz, Fox Politics correspondent, thanks for being my co-pilot.

I mean, you needed somebody to speak Spanish.

Oh, that's actually funny.

This episode was reported by me and Christian Pass, produced by me and Peter Ballinon-Rosen, and edited by Miranda Kennedy.

It was fact-checked by Laura Bullard and engineered by Patrick Boyd and Adrian Lilly.

I'm Miles Bryan, filling in as host here on Today Explained.

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