TMontoya’s mother has sold festival foods—funnel cakes, burgers, hot dogs—across the American Southwest for years. But lately, business has been bad. Costs are high, so he has raised his prices. Workers ask for hours he can not give them. In Arizona, where he lives, Montoya pays $6 a gallon to fill his food trucks with diesel. This summer, he may have to skip the California leg of his concert route because fuel is more expensive there.
“It’s Trump,” Montoya told us outside a popular Hispanic grocery store in Casa Grande, Arizona, which is largely in one of the most evenly divided House districts in the country. Montoya voted for President Trump in 2024, but now, confused doesn’t begin to hide how he feels. The president brags about the economy, although everyone who knows Montoya is hurt; promised to end the war, but started one in Iran. “When Trump opens his mouth, three quarters of what he says is fiction, lies,” Montoya said. He plans to vote in the midterm elections this fall. But he can’t choose a Republican.
You can’t flip a funnel cake in this part of Arizona without sprinkling on someone who sounds like Montoya—concerned, and a little remorseful about how they voted two Novembers ago. These days, a surprising number of the president’s supporters have turned against him. Some of Trump’s admirers in the liberal world have spent the past year baffled by his actions on the Epstein files, immigration and now Iran. And in the past week, religious conservatives have been criticizing their unchallenged leader after he posted a Jesus-like image on social media and attacked the pope, calling America’s first pope “WEAK on Crime.” Some Republicans in battleground states told us they would rather Trump not campaign very difficult to their candidate; others have seen their small dollar contributions plummet.
Midterm elections are usually bad for the party of the incumbent president. But this year threatens to be brutal. Trump’s endorsement is down right now than it was this time before the 2018 midterm elections, when Democrats won back the House in a historic blue wave. Almost every new poll is a red flag for Republicans: Independents, young voters and Latinos—groups that were crucial to Trump’s victory in 2024—are no longer in the bag. Even white Americans with no college education, once the president’s most powerful group, they have turned to himaccording to CNN’s polling average. Democratic-leaning voters there is a possibility of 17 more points than voters who supported the GOP said they were “very motivated” to vote in November.
Most Trump voters, in other words, have had it. At this point, it seems safe to declare that the historic coalition that oversaw the second presidential election is over—kaput. The question is whether, with seven months to go before the midterms, his semblance can be revived.
Cbig wing, the gap between Tucson and Phoenix where farmland is giving way to new subdivisions, is on the northwestern edge of Arizona’s Sixth District. In 2024, Trump won here by less than a point, after losing the district by less than four points four years earlier. The area is currently represented by Juan Ciscomani, a Republican who narrowly won his two terms in Congress and who defeated Trump by a narrow margin in 2024. Ciscomani is up for re-election this year, but what we’ve heard from some of his constituents may not give him much reason to be optimistic about his prospects.
Shoppers outside the market bemoaned the rising prices of everything: gas, meat, store-bought chicharrones ($9.29 for a large bag). And they were ready to punish the Trump party for it. Traci Calvo, a 61-year-old Democrat living on a fixed income, said she is poorer today than she was in 2024, when she voted for Trump, believing he would lower prices. High gas prices mean she stays home more often—skipping Bible study at her church, volunteering less, and even missing exercise classes. Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran was his move to break the relationship with the president. “I think he just wants a war,” he said. “He has made it clear that he is a rival to everyone.” He doesn’t plan to vote for Ciscomani, or any other Republican for that matter, in November.
The mood among voters was grim about 60 miles southeast in Oro Valley, a suburb north of Tucson known for its mountain scenery—and home to many of the conservative voters that Ciscoman and statewide Republicans rely on. Sitting in his car after a shopping spree at the dollar store, Zuriel Reyes told us he feels “shit” about voting for Trump in 2024, his first ever election. “I don’t trust our government anymore,” the 19-year-old said, taking a small bite from a Slim Jim. He has signed up for the Army next year and feels like the president is “putting all of our lives at risk with this weird war game he’s playing.”
The conflict with Iran has disillusioned many other supporters of the president, including those more entrenched in the MAGA world. On Easter Sunday, Trump’s threat to destroy “an entire civilization” in Iran angered many former Trump supporters, such as Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, and Megyn Kelly, who later announced on her SiriusXM radio show that she is “sick of this shit.”
Earlier this week, when Trump posted a photo of his AI in flowing robes, surrounded by heavenly light as he healed a patient, he alienated one group of Americans that has rarely left his side: conservative Christians. The picture, it announced Daily Wire journalist Megan Basham, was “EXTREMELY blasphemous.” Joel Webbon, a far-right pastor who believes women should be disenfranchised, concluded that Trump is “right now demonized.” Riley Gaines, an anti-revolutionary activist who has appeared at Trump rallies and whom the president has previously called a “strong athlete,” wrote that “God will not be mocked.”
Trump deleted the post and said the photo was “me as a doctor.” But he also doubled down, as he tends to do, when asked to respond to his critics. “I didn’t listen to Riley Gaines,” he told one reporter. “I’m not a big Riley fan, actually.”
Pmaybe The storm cloud of negativity hanging over the president explains why his planned appearance tomorrow in Arizona will be so short. From touchdown to wheels up, Trump is scheduled to spend just two hours in Phoenix, we learned, a very quick visit compared to his past hours-long meetings that featured an endless parade of MAGA supporters. (He is also scheduled to appear at an event in Las Vegas today.) Some Republican allies who expect to soon face a highly competitive race want the president to get in and out of Arizona as quickly as possible. “When Trump shows up for a rally, he dominates the news the day before, the day of, and the day after,” one GOP consultant told us. “It’s a reminder to voters why they’re angry.” (Although it’s better for Trump to visit now, this person added, than, say, in October.) Despite this, all of Arizona’s Republican members of Congress, David Schweikert, will attend the event organized by the conservative youth organization Turning Point USA.
White House spokesman Kush Desai said Trump would highlight economic success in Nevada and Arizona. The president has been open about the “temporary disruption” caused by the war in Iran, Desai said in a written statement, “but the tens of millions of Americans who are benefiting this tax season from the President’s signed Tax Cuts for Working Families — no taxes on tips, overtime, or Social Security — show how the Administration has not lost focus on delivering our agenda at home.” Ciscomani is scheduled to speak at a Phoenix rally. “Juan is focused on delivering results in Southern Arizona and getting things done. That’s why he was independently ranked as the best member of Congress from Arizona,” his spokesman, Daniel Scarpinato, told us in a statement.
Trump—or, more accurately, the conditions Trump has helped create—also appears to have affected GOP funding. Some donors are giving half the amount they would normally donate to Republican candidates and blaming economic instability for the decline, one Georgia GOP county chairman told us. Two Republican consultants from another battleground state told us that small-dollar donations to their candidates dropped in early March, days after the United States and Israel launched strikes across Iran. In a race that can be decided by very narrow margins, these contributions can mean the difference between sending a final round of mailers to low-profile voters or not. “If this is a two-week period, it’s not a big deal,” one of the advisers, who asked not to be named to discuss local campaign dynamics, said. “If we’re still attacking Iran in November? I mean…”
The if it is many. Theoretically, if the war in Iran is quickly ending, if gas prices drop, and if food becomes more affordable, some Americans may feel reassured enough to support Republicans once again. It’s not as if many of Trump’s critics are eager to vote for Democrats. “Trump could give up the nukes and I’d still vote Republican,” Kelly said recently. Gaines, after learning that the president did not like him, wrote on X that “I love the President” and that he will “continue to support him and the America First agenda.”
But the president and his party may find it difficult to save Trump’s broad coalition. In Casa Grande, Montoya told us he would give Trump three weeks to end the war and fix the economy. Meanwhile, he’s eating leftovers more often, putting fewer miles on his food trucks, and setting the air conditioner higher than he’d like when Arizona temperatures rise. Montoya also, he added, will research his options for November.
