Two Trump voters in suburban Atlanta disagree hard

swing voters – Gerald and Wally, two Black men from the suburbs of Atlanta who switched from voting for Democrats in 2020 to voting for President Donald Trump in 2024, offer sharply different grades for the president. For Gerald, Trump is “amazing” and the current economic p

On a quiet suburban evening outside Atlanta, Gerald sits at the kitchen table he shares with his wife, looking at the week behind him and the one ahead. He is a truck driver, and after a long day, he still talks about politics like it is personal.

He is, by his own description, “so pro-Trump” that “people just don’t even understand.”

For Gerald, the appeal is simple and specific: he thinks Trump is delivering something different from the usual playbook. “The dude is amazing because he’s not following the script,” he said. He gave President Trump an “A++ for his performance on the job.”

Across town, Wally, 44, lives the same suburban reality but reads it through a harsher lens. He sat outside by a fire pit, near a swing set he said his kids are getting too big for. He could not name a single positive line item to hold up from the Trump presidency.

“When asked the same question, Wally, 44, gave Trump an F,” the picture of his frustration is blunt. “Like, what do we have that we can hang our hat on right now?” Wally said. “We have higher gas prices.”

Gerald and Wally are two of a dozen swing voters in swing states who have agreed to speak regularly with NPR over the next three years as part of a project called Swing Shift. They agreed not to use their full names and were part of a portrait effort that commissioned an artist to illustrate them. meant to let them speak more freely without fearing personal or professional blowback.

Both men grew up voting for Democrats. They voted for President Joe Biden in 2020. Then, in 2024, they switched to voting for President Trump.

Their disagreement is the point. In political reporting, polls can feel like a snapshot in time. Focus groups and one-off interviews in public places don’t always let reporters follow how a voter thinks over the months and years. Swing Shift is instead an ongoing conversation with voters who could be pivotal in both midterms and the 2028 presidential election. including people who don’t always vote for the same party and may have swung in different directions during the past decade.

The stakes are clear to the pollster Frank Luntz. who said. “How they vote is how America will vote.” He also described the group of voters as a slice of the country that doesn’t simply move between Republicans and Democrats. sometimes supporting an independent candidate. sometimes not voting at all.

As part of the project, participants are asked a baseline set of questions that includes grading the president’s performance and the performance of Republicans and Democrats in Congress. They are also asked for one word or phrase describing the current state of the country.

Gerald’s word picture is built around momentum and trust. Wally’s is built around waiting for the system to break.

Wally does not sound surprised by where things have landed. He said he did not have high expectations for a second Trump term, and that he had grown tired of what he called the incremental change Democrats offered.

He believes the next step is to push through a kind of national reckoning. “Wally said his family is financially secure, he has a good job in technology, but he wants a better country for his children. And he just can’t see it.”

He told himself the best he could do was ride it out and hope time would turn.

“With Trump, we’re just trying to weather this guy,” Wally said. “We can’t get to 2029 fast enough. The problem is what shape will we be in once we get there.”

Sitting with that fear, he described a country slipping underwater. “Everyone’s drowning, and like we just need to come up for air,” Wally said. “No one’s really just trying to swim to shore. We’re just trying to get our head or our noses above the water.”

He thinks change, if it comes, will be forced only after anger has a chance to reach a boiling point. “I feel if people get mad enough, they’ll force change,” Wally said. “They’ll force it somehow.”

He voted for what he called “maximum chaos” after his sense of the system darkened. He said he did not expect Democrats to deliver the kind of outcome he wants, and he said his wife was not on board with both his political shift and his more nihilist view of what the country needs.

For Wally, one of the most immediate, everyday proofs of his frustration is the price at the pump.

Gerald also feels the economic hit, but he treats it like a price tag on a longer bet.

He said his vote in 2024 was hopeful. He swung to Trump after researching and doing more critical thinking.

“And to me critical thinking means, what if I’m wrong about what I’ve been told?” Gerald asked.

He credits his children with helping him challenge his views, especially as he learned more about history. He said he has not gone back to the Democrats, even after losing friends over pro-Trump posts on social media.

In Gerald’s telling, his information diet and his political conversion came together. He is “a big fan of using AI” and he gets his news from YouTube, TikTok, and ABC’s World News with David Muir.

Switching parties, he said, was like switching phones. “I was a [Samsung] Galaxy phone user,” he said. “And he was all in on the Galaxy until he picked up an iPhone. He pointed to the phone on the table in front of him.”

“This thing is amazing,” Gerald said. “You know, when I find the truth out, you will not represent it better than I can. It’s just how I am.”

Still, his household life is not insulated from the cost pressures that have been defining the debate. “Gas prices are kicking his butt right now,” he said. His personal vehicle is a big dually pickup that takes diesel. and he said diesel is even more expensive than regular unleaded. He tries to use his wife’s car to cut down on fuel spending.

But that pain has not changed his view of the president. Gerald said his faith holds because he thinks the economic suffering will be worth it if the threat from Iran is resolved.

“It’s a season,” he said, explaining the way he is getting through it. “I just try to do the cutting back to do, to survive, ’til we make it through it. ‘It’s like anything else. It’s a season.’”

He uses apps to find discounts on gas and described other ways to tighten spending. like not eating out at restaurants all the time. He said he and his wife have also been fasting. “Cook. Fast,” he said. “I mean me and my wife have been fasting. and there’s a lot of benefits. including one of those benefits is saving money on groceries.”.

Behind these personal stories sits a national disagreement about whether the current economic strain is the cost of doing things differently, or proof that the direction is wrong.

In a polling snapshot carried into the discussion, Gerald’s community and Wally’s worldview are not just abstract divisions. Trump, at least among Black voters, has seen a shift over time. The source for the figure is the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at Cornell University. which found that in Feb. 2025, 36% of Black voters approved of the job Trump was doing. “Today, that number has dropped to 26%,” according to the same set of numbers.

That decline helps explain why Wally’s assessment is so dark. He told himself that to get real change, the country might have to hit rock bottom.

Gerald’s hopes, meanwhile, rest on an argument that the country can endure hardship for something bigger. For him, the gas price pain is real. He just says he can live with it.

A separate NPR/PBS News/Marist poll finds that “8 in 10 Americans say the high price of gas is causing them economic strain. ” and “nearly two-thirds blame Trump for those higher prices.” Gerald is among those feeling the squeeze. and he does not deny it. He simply places his bet elsewhere, in trust that a looming threat can be managed.

Wally places the bet in anger and urgency. He wants the country to stop circling and start changing, even if it means enduring more turmoil.

Both men cast their vote as a turning point in their own lives. But the way they grade President Trump, and what they think the country is going through right now, could hardly be more different.

United States politics President Trump Joe Biden swing voters Atlanta suburbs black voters gas prices diesel Iran threat NPR Swing Shift