Bellwether Research & Consulting

“A lot of voters thought, ‘It’s not going to happen here,’ ” even as a growing number of states across the country passed increasingly restrictive antiabortion laws, said Republican pollster Christine Matthews. “This is a bomb going off in front of everyone who now recognizes, yes it could happen here.

Together, said Christine Matthews, a pollster, they’ve created “the testosterone ticket.” In interviews, many of the young men supporting Mr. Trump said they admired his strength and macho demeanor.

“If he doesn’t have non-college-educated white women in that equation—particularly in Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania—the math does not work for him.”

“They saw this sort of anti-male movement. They worried that it and the #MeToo movement had gone too far,” she said. “They worried about the men in their lives, and the men, of course, worried about themselves.”

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“Right now the hazy veil of memory is benefiting Trump. People are looking back, and it's a little fuzzy, but it seems like, gosh, things weren't as expensive.”

“To me, this is not new,” she said. “This is just a sort of rehash of what he tried in 2020. It strikes me as an arsonist who sets a fire and then says, ‘I’m the only one who can put the fire out.’

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“These voters are voting. They’re paying attention. They’re listening. They’re not liking what they’re hearing, and they are much, much more volatile than conventional wisdom would have,” said Christine Matthews, the president of Bellwether Research. “I don’t think answers from either party are loud or clear or definitive enough for these voters.”

Weighted vest women are the 2026 Swing voters. “
“They have a modern diet of information that is heavily influenced by new media, social streams and podcasts,” Matthews said. “But it doesn’t cause them to go down weird fringe rabbit holes. It encourages them to adopt something like a weighted vest, but not, like, oppose vaccines.”

“Even as states such as Texas have passed laws that would all but ban the procedure, strategists in both parties have been surprised at how little they are hearing about it in their surveys and focus groups — or as GOP pollster Christine Matthews said to me Tuesday, “why the dog hasn’t barked on this.” People in moderate and liberal states tend to shrug off those restrictive new laws as “something that couldn’t happen here.”

“She is in that sweet spot, you know, where she's sort of the perfect age. She checks the motherhood box but is now able to run and her kids are safely launched,” Matthews said.

“It’s not going to be what drives everyone to make a vote choice, but it will drive some people to make a vote choice.”

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