Focus Group Report: Independents and Soft Partisans on the Trump Administration’s Early Actions

This Navigator Research report contains findings from focus groups conducted online on January 29, 2025 among independents and soft-partisans (voters who do not identify strongly with either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party) with varied levels of engagement: Maine voters who report following the news “not too closely,” Michigan voters who report following the news either “somewhat” or “very closely,” and North Carolina voters who report followed the news “very closely.”

Participants across levels of engagement describe the first weeks of the Trump administration as chaotic.

Voters characterize Trump as “chaotic,” “moving fast” in a way that “might not be perfect.” Across engagement level, news of Trump’s initial actions is breaking through, whether it’s renaming the Gulf of Mexico, enacting mass deportations, or freezing government funding. One Michigan man said: “I just think some of the stuff just feels like it’s done for shock value, and I guess that’s where it’s like, ‘This is how we’re starting off right now.’ It’s going to be a long four years. I feel like the first time, it just kind of gradually developed into this boiling point. “

• Many recount Trump’s actions on immigration and the border. One Michigan man said: “They’re [ICE is] going to churches. They’re going to schools. They’re setting up interstate-wide and all that. I heard all kinds of crazy stuff.” Some expressed openness to the plans, including another Maine man who said: “I was a big advocate for the crackdown on the immigration, because I just think you just can’t have open borders like that and I think there’s been well-documented negative effects.”
  
• Others worry about the impact of the mass deportation plans. A man in Maine said: “I think that’s resulted in a lot of fear. A lot of fear within teachers. Even in Maine specifically, there’s a lot of immigrants that are here legally, but are maybe waiting on papers to go through. And so even if they are documented, there’s a lot of fear resulting.” After learning of ICE being able to enter schools, hospitals, and places of worship, a Michigan woman reacted: “I think that is wrong, but in his rhetoric, he says that if they’re a criminal. So are these people that are in the churches, in the hospitals, in the schools, are they criminal? If they’re not criminal, then he should leave them alone. His thing is criminal. He throws that in there a lot, but I don’t understand the school and church thing.” A Maine man questioned its feasibility: “I just think you got 11 million people, supposedly, how do you physically find them and deport them?”

Trump’s attempted government funding freeze is viewed as poorly executed with dire implications, including for some participants.

Most heard about the temporary freeze to funding government programs last week. A North Carolina man said: “I just saw something about it the other day, and I also saw that I think it affected cancer research was kind of like a by-product of the freeze, and if that’s one of those things, I think there was too much action too soon. I don’t think it was fully vetted out.” Many fear the outcomes from the freeze, including a Michigan woman who said: “I think it’s going to put a lot of strain on a lot of families and the elderly. The elderly, when you do this type of thing, they are really the vulnerable people because they really get afraid of what’s going to happen.“ A Maine woman noted: “I was appalled that he wanted to cut the basic social services to the people that need it the most, because he does want to go back to giving the big corporations more tax cuts, and the people that have his ear are the billionaires. I mean, why is Elon Musk in the middle of our government all of a sudden, and dictating what’s going on?” A Michigan man also stated: “It’s just focusing on the wrong things and now you’re holding up things that are actually important, like food stamps. I feel like it probably goes into half and reduced lunch for children as well. It’s like we should be establishing more social safety nets for people so that if they do make a mistake, that they’re able to get back off their feet and do something with it. But we’re doing the opposite…”

• Some participants worry about the impacts personally. A North Carolina woman said: “I’m going to be real with y’all. I think it’s stupid. There’s no benefit of freezing that stuff. A lot of Americans rely on a lot of those things. I have Medicaid. I rely on federal grants. My grandma, she relies on Medicare. It’s like what benefit was there to really do that? It don’t benefit nobody except the rich. And I believe that’s probably what they’re doing that stuff for because you’re just going to put more money in their pockets.” A Michigan woman also said: “I’m actually a disabled individual from a dog bite accident that happened four years ago now at this point, and I truly am 100 percent don’t know what of my doctors are still my doctors at this moment and which ones take my insurance anymore.”
• Some see the freeze as an effective way to rid government bloat, including a North Carolina woman who said: “Well, the freeze thing was never supposed to, as far as I’ve researched, it was not supposed to affect welfare or SNAP and those kinds of things. It might affect Medicaid… so if that’s the truth, then it’s not so bad if it’s just trying to get rid of all the excess nonsense that’s in the government.” Another North Carolina man disputed the impact of the freeze: “None of that is affected to the people that they’re getting. People are lying. They’re trying to rile people up to get people to go in the streets and burn the cities down. Meals on Wheels is not affected, Medicaid is not affected, food stamps [are] not affected.”

Participants express concern about the influence of the wealthy on Trump, but also reflect on corruption and discontent with the outgoing administration.

A woman in Maine expressed concern about the influence of billionaires on Trump: “I’m a little concerned about all the billionaires and the white men that he’s been surrounding himself with.” A North Carolina man also said: “I was all for Trump after the four years of the Biden administration, but then Elon entered the mix, and so now I’m like, I wonder if Elon has our best interest in hand. Not just America, but Americans. And he wrote a big check to Trump. So I’m kind of on the fence now. I’m wondering if Trump’s going to listen more to him because he wrote the big money check to him.” 

• Some were quick to compare the first weeks of Trump’s administration to the alternative options. A Maine woman said: “Well, it can’t get worse than it was with Biden. I mean, that’s kind of what I keep looking at in my mind. It can’t get worse than it was with the Biden administration.” Another woman in North Carolina said: “At the end of the day, I believe when it came to this election, you literally had to choose the lesser of the two evils. I wasn’t a hundred percent with Kamala. I’m not a hundred percent with Trump, but we got to choose someone.” When asked about Trump’s actions pardoning the January 6th rioters, one man in Maine said: “It’s following his predecessor, I guess. I think Biden… I read that he said the most pardons of any president. But just the fact what he did at the end, I mean that’s just corrupt.”