The Broken Bargain: Why the Trump Coalition Is Fracturing in 2026

From soaring tariffs to ICE's violence, the economic and moral costs of Trump's second term are clear. And that's alienating the very independent voters who delivered him the White House.

Andrew Wilson is a polling analyst for The Lincoln Project.

Illustration by Riley Levine

Imagine for a moment that it’s 2024 and you’ve just cast your ballot for Donald Trump. You and your family have struggled ever since runaway inflation sent the price of everyday goods through the roof. He promised to bring prices down. You don’t love Trump, and some of his ideas sound crazy, but you chalk that up to “Trump talk.” You voted for a change candidate and a strong leader. If prices don’t come down, your personal finances feel doomed—and Trump says fixing that is his top priority.

It’s hard for many of us to imagine the above scenario. If you are reading this, I doubt you’re a big fan of the president, but this was the mindset of millions of American voters across demographic groups. NBC News exit polling after the 2024 election shows that among voters who said the economy was their top issue (32%), three out of every four voted for Trump. Despite the fact that many voters saw Trump as more extreme—with 44% of registered voters saying Trump was a fascist in an ABC/Ipsos poll in October 2024—he still won.

Today, the picture has changed dramatically. Those lukewarm Trump voters are waking up to the now-evident authoritarianism and corruption of Trump’s second term. Last week, Pew found that Trump’s approval rating had fallen to 37%. The poll also found that half of Americans say Trump’s actions so far have been worse than they expected. Half of Americans say he does not have the leadership skills—or the mental and physical fitness—required to be president.

Independent voters have undergone a political transformation since 2024, even as the share of Americans identifying as independent has spiked dramatically. On many important issues, independent voters are now opposed to Trump by a 2-to-1 margin. According to the most recent Harvard CAPS/Harris poll, 57% of independent and “other” respondents said they disapproved of Trump’s overall job performance.

That represents a double-digit drop from independent approval levels immediately following the 2024 election. Importantly, over half of those same respondents said Trump’s campaign promises were not consistent with his policies since returning to the presidency. The Economist/YouGov poll last month similarly found that 67% of independents said the country was on the wrong track.

Trump has bled support for two key reasons. First, he has not fulfilled his campaign promises, especially when it comes to lowering prices. Second, the brutality of his immigration enforcement has been too much for most Americans to bear.

Immigration is a foundational pillar of Trump’s agenda. From his entrance onto the national political stage, Trump has ranted nonstop about immigrants, and that constant drumbeat proved to be a winning political strategy—until now. The murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Good have reshaped the political landscape in ways that, in my view, are likely to reverberate through American politics for decades. The most recent NYT/Siena poll found that 61% of Americans say ICE tactics have gone too far. Among independents and Republicans, 71% and 19%, respectively, say ICE has gone too far.

Trump cannot fix runaway prices while tariffs and tariff threats remain his primary diplomatic tool. Tariffs, by definition, raise input costs and consumer prices—a basic economic reality that economists across the ideological spectrum have warned about for years. He cannot de-escalate his deportation campaign because he is fully captured by the most extreme conservative influencers.

This is a poisonous concoction for independent voters—one they will refuse to swallow this November and again in 2028. Trump sold himself as a lifeline for voters drowning in economic anxiety. Instead, he has handed them higher prices, moral revulsion, and a government that feels less accountable and more dangerous by the day. For the voters who reluctantly chose him as a last resort, the bargain has been broken—and once that trust is gone, no amount of bluster or fearmongering can bring it back.

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