Weird surprise: Widespread Trump regret would deliver a decisive win to Harris

Trump regret is unquestionably on the rise, but one pollster did not expect it to be so far-reaching that it could have handed the White House to Kamala Harris.

G. Elliot Morris, the organizer behind the March 2026 monthly Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll, discovered that one out of every eight Trump voters from 2024 has buyer’s remorse. And when asked how they would vote in a do-over, enough respondents were willing to go with Harris.

“Even ‘small’ regret percentages (13 percent is not an obviously high number) can have big impacts on close elections,” said Morris, explaining that a voter who switches candidates actually swings the margin by two votes (one fewer for their side, one more for the other). Meanwhile a voter who moves to a third party or just stays home, disgusted, costs their candidate one point.

“…. [T]he partisan asymmetry in the 2024 vote regret really matters for electoral strategy and narrative purposes,” said Morris. “If we do the math on a 2024 election, given the above percentages, Harris wins a clear victory. … “Add [the numbers] together, and you get a net 6.2 − 2.1 = 4.1 points swing toward Harris. Applied to Trump’s 1.5-point margin, that flips the popular vote to roughly Harris +2.6 percentage points.”

The numbers were a surprise because Harris was a bit of a pariah after she lost the popular vote to Trump. But it turns out that Harris’ voters are still feeling good about the vote they cast for her, even if it didn’t deliver the goods. Most of them would still vote for her again today.

Morris noted the 2024 buyer’s remorse for Trump was higher among the groups that powered his 2024 victory. This included 17 percent of voters ages 18-29, with voters ages 30-44 being close behind at 15 percent.

This is an abysmal change for Trump considering young voters were one of his most surprising gains in 2024. But now they express four times the rate of remorse as Trump’s oldest voters.

The second pivotal group that saved Trump’s bacon in 2024 — who now hate their decision — includes 16 percent of Hispanic voters, which Morris said was the highest rate of any racial group tested. Black voters were next at 14 percent.

But then there’s the shift of lower-income voters earning under $50,000: Eleven percent of them desperately want a do-over.

Morris said regret was lower the higher a respondents’ income.

from Alternet.org https://ift.tt/RFYBMcn
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