The Trump voters in swing states who are returning to the fold
By Tim Reid, Nathan Layne and James Oliphant
(Reuters) — Donald Trump begins 2024 as the clear frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination despite facing scores of criminal charges, a dynamic that would doom most other candidates and has confounded his political opponents.
Those criminal charges include indictments for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election culminating in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.
To try to understand his enduring appeal, Reuters spoke to five Trump supporters in five general election battleground states: Nevada, Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.
Trump currently leads Democratic President Joe Biden in several swing state general election polls, suggesting he will be highly competitive in a likely re-match next November.
Although all five Republicans voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, three began 2023 open to other Republican candidates, including two who said they initially planned to vote for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
As voting in the Republican nomination contest kicks off in the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 15, four now see Trump as their party's best hope to defeat Biden in November. They cite Trump's isolationist foreign policy, criminal charges, and hard line on immigration as key reasons for their return.
None are full-blown «election deniers» backing Trump's false claims that he, and not Biden, won the 2020 election. But they say the U.S. election system needs greater oversight.
All said they saw Trump as a strong leader and none considered him racist, despite past comments decrying Haiti and some African nations as «shithole» countries which stirred widespread criticism and recent accusations that migrants were «poisoning the blood»
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