{"id":38815,"date":"2026-06-14T12:26:49","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T11:26:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kaizen-blog.org\/?p=38815"},"modified":"2026-06-14T12:39:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T11:39:16","slug":"die-arbeiter-verlieren-den-glauben-an-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kaizen-blog.org\/en\/die-arbeiter-verlieren-den-glauben-an-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"The Workers Are Losing Faith in Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

Among white voters without a college degree, the foundation of his coalition, support for Trump\u2019s economic policy is collapsing, a shift that could decide the election this fall. Anyone in Germany voting for the AfD from this very demographic should pay attention before following the same path!<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The last time Donald Trump faced a midterm election, in 2018, Republicans in Congress were dragged down by his unpopularity and lost more than three dozen seats in the House of Representatives. But the ground did not entirely give way back then. The party even gained seats in the Senate because white working class voters stayed loyal to him on the economy. That deep reservoir of goodwill has now largely evaporated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the first time, white working class voters are seriously doubting Trump\u2019s economic policy. A review of many polls shows an unusual shift among white voters without a college degree between his first midterm and today. Back then, they approved of his handling of the economy by margins of thirty points and more. Today, they disapprove, depending on the poll, by fourteen to more than thirty points. The figures come from polls by CNN from March 2017, November 2018, March 2025, and the first days of May this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Trump\u2019s standing on economic issues has fallen in almost every group. But the collapse among the very loyal bloc that has formed the foundation of his coalition for a decade could become one of the most consequential developments of 2026, according to strategists in both parties. A majority of white voters without a college degree no longer approve of his economic policy, and the numbers are low: Fox News shows 33 percent approval, CBS News 39, the NPR, PBS and Marist poll 40, and CNN 43. He has lost the faith of his most loyal supporters, and on the most urgent issue of the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His advisers are trying to stabilize the situation and sell the measures from last year\u2019s tax package. This month, the Treasury Department released a report listing how workers benefited from the tax law. And last week, MAGA Inc., Trump\u2019s 350 million dollar campaign machine, spoke out publicly for the first time since the 2024 election. The theme was telling. It focused on how tax cuts had helped working and middle class Americans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump returned to power in 2024 promising to stop illegal immigration, bring inflation under control, and revive the economy. According to exit polls, he won 66 percent of the white working class vote, exactly the same share he received in his first victory in 2016. But since his second inauguration, his tariff policies, stubbornly high gasoline and food prices, his focus on foreign policy, especially the war with Iran, and continuing inflation have weakened that support, even though border crossings have dropped sharply. In April, a gas station in San Francisco advertised prices above seven dollars per gallon, well over 1.85 dollars per liter. The greatest pressure comes from the cost of living, from prices and stagnant wages, and from fear of what the next blow will be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Molly Murphy, a Democratic pollster who worked for former Vice President Kamala Harris\u2019s 2024 campaign, calls the shift striking. After he began the war with Iran, she said, workers who had voted for him no longer had words to explain the decision and felt it directly through gasoline prices. After a decade in which Trump has been part of their lives, it feels like a turning point in which they are struggling with the realization that he was not who they believed he was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tim Spencer and his wife<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Tim Spencer from Pella, Iowa, seventy two years old and a former tool and die maker, once voted for Trump. Now rising gasoline prices are squeezing him, and together with what he sees as the president\u2019s increasingly erratic behavior, they have turned him from supporter into dissenter. Filling his Chevy pickup now costs him about 140 dollars instead of 90. In previous summers, he and his wife pulled a camper across the Midwest to campgrounds. At today\u2019s gas prices, he says, it is now only a camper for Iowa. And one should know this: in Pella, Iowa, a town where Trump still received more than 70 percent of the vote, people were already walking through the streets in October 2025 wearing cardboard crowns and shouting, \u201cNo kings! No crowns!\u201d In Pella, Iowa, a town where Trump is still treated almost like a king, around 150 people dared to take to the streets to chant \u201cNo Kings, No Crowns.\u201d Most were older women, some over seventy, who once could not own a credit card without a man\u2019s signature and who now protest for their granddaughters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Pella, Iowa<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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For years many had trusted him, especially on economic issues. During his first term they believed the image he projected of himself, the decisive businessman from The Apprentice, and they remembered the economy under his leadership when he ran again in 2024. In 2018, the losses of his party came elsewhere, mainly among wealthier suburban women. On the eve of that midterm election, his economic approval among white voters without degrees still stood at 66 percent according to CNN. That was one of the reasons Republicans lost the House but also unseated four Democratic incumbents in the Senate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In this term, his standing on the economy, the issue strategists in both parties consider the most important of 2026, has fallen even further than his overall approval. Among those same voters, disapproval of his economic policy recently reached 57 percent according to CNN, and overall 38 percent approve of him while 58 percent disapprove. Where polls dig deeper into inflation and living costs, the picture becomes even darker for him. Among white working class voters, only 36 percent approved of how he was handling living costs, and Fox News found only 25 percent approved of his handling of inflation. Many voted for Trump in 2024 precisely because of those promises. Trump had talked about falling gasoline prices, but prices rose. Trump does not make things easier with his own words dismissing the economic concerns of so many people. \u201cI love inflation,\u201d he said last week in the Oval Office. He had previously brushed aside rising gasoline prices as trivial, and regarding the timing of scaling down the Iran war, he said he was not thinking about Americans\u2019 financial situation. That final line is already appearing in Democratic ads, including one targeting Representative Rob Bresnahan in Pennsylvania, showing him three times from three camera angles in the first twelve seconds, interrupted only by three words on screen: gasoline, groceries, and utilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n