The stakes in Tuesdayโs midterm elections are so high that Shane Dunn voted for the first time in his life, at age 65.
After a career as a cook up and down the East Coast, Dunn moved to the Philadelphia suburbs and voted last week in Levittown. โI was always a busy man,โ he said outside his polling place. But now, โIโm learning whatโs going on within our country, and this is actually what brought me out.โ
Democrats got his vote. โIt feels great, to put my word in,โ he said, patting the โI Votedโ sticker on his black hoodie.
Voters across the United States are getting their word in, too, as they determine which party controls the Senate and the House and takes charge of governors’ offices, legislatures and state leadership posts in the final two years of Republican Donald Trumpโs presidency.
What many of them see is that the America they’ve known is slipping away.
They see lawlessness coming from those who create the laws. They see hate stirred by politicians among neighbors, corruption at every turn, billionaires ruling the roost and a culture that doesnโt speak to how they live โ in short, American bedrock at risk of crumbling. Not to mention those crazy gas prices.
In dozens of Associated Press interviews with people who cast ballots at advance polling places or drop boxes across the country, the angst was palpable, most sharply from those who oppose Trump but also from many who support him.
A vote is cast to stop the โmadnessโ
โI saw my vote today as trying to put the brakes on just the madness,โ said Arthur Horner, 59, who runs a food importing and marketing company that has been hurt by tariffs, after dropping his mail ballot at Dauphin Countyโs election bureau in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He voted for Democrats.
In Sioux City, Iowa, cattle rancher Elizabeth Marlett, 61, voted in Woodbury Countyโs historic Prairie-style courthouse and walked out stewing about a variety of things โ the chemicals in processed food, her sonโs struggles to get his veterans’ benefits and, perhaps most of all, what she sees as society’s leftward lurch. Things seem broken to her, too.
โFamily values are going by the wayside, and they need to be brought back,โ she said. โOur liberties have been stomped all over. Religion has been stomped all over. And I believe we in the majority need to step up and stop being silent.โ She voted Republican.
Voters despair at the stoking of anger by Trump and allies
The anger in the air, stirred by a cursing president who abides no slights, is too much for some people.
โHe’s just destroying us,โ Democrat Linda Markle, 72, said of the president. She spoke outside the Warminster Township library in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
โI am so afraid for this country,โ she said. โPeople used to look out for each other. Not anymore.โ
โAll people do now is just hate each other,โ she said, and Trump โseems to have given them the courage to go ahead and be like that. โฆ The division is horrible, absolutely horrible, and I canโt wait to see the back of him.โ
Republican Chris Smith, 27, a Harrisburg software engineer who voted for Trump in 2024, sympathizes with Markle’s sentiment, to a point.
โA lot of people hate him for various reasons, and I can understand why,โ he said, noting that โI think heโs kind of going a bit crazy on a lot of things.โ But he likes Trumpโs effort to return manufacturing to the U.S. along with the goals of his tariffs, and he voted Republican because he still thinks that party is more fiscally responsible than Democrats.
In Ohio, Lori Wilkinson, a retired home health worker from New Pittsburg, and her husband, David, a janitor, consider themselves independents. David recently wrote to their Republican governor, Mike DeWine, to tell him what a good job he’s doing, and they voted for Republican George W. Bush for president in the past.
Trump? โHeโs the worst president in United States history,โ David said from the Wayne County election center. โYou get up every day, and youโre like, โWhatโs he going to do now?โโ Said Lori: โHeโs got the hate just so bad, itโs just out of hand. Itโs just out of control.โ She fears that if Democrats win widely Tuesday, Trump will โgo fricking berserk.โ
Trump supporter Therese Mennell gets it. โThereโs that kind of arrogant vibe about him that people donโt like, and sometimes I shut him off because of the way he talks,โ the retiree said from the Wayne County center. โBut, I mean, heโs doing the right thing. He is saving our country.โ
Some pretend Trump is on the ballot
Despite his striking unpopularity in polls, Trump repeatedly asked supporters to pretend he’s on the midterm ballot, betting that would motivate fans to vote who otherwise might not. But that cuts both ways.
Samontae Mwangi, 20, and his brother, Gathenya Mwangi, 19, voted for the first time, casting early ballots Tuesday at their election center in Topeka, Kansas. Both work at a plant that manufactures trackside buildings for railroads.
They went with their grandfather, Lynn Henderson, 68, a retired Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. worker and a former Marine lance corporal who wore a Marineโs cap. Henderson said he took his grandsons to vote because his own mother died recently and he wanted them to have an event to remember him when heโs gone.
All three are hoping that the election produces Democratic victories and political change. Gathenya said the economy and discontent with Trump could motivate people whoโve voted in the past to show up, as well as those who never have. โIt really could change, make a difference, I feel, if a lot of people vote,โ he said.
Denise Wunder, a retired sandwich shop manager, pulled up to the center in a van featuring a decorative license plate with an American eagle. The strong Trump supporter is the daughter of Democrats. Illegal immigration is her top issue.
โI think Trump is kind of our last hope, because otherwise this worldโs going to go to hell in a handbasket,โ she said. โYeah, he says stupid stuff, but, you know, so do we.โ
In the Richmond, Virginia, suburb of Henrico County, voters arrived at a steady clip on a crisp fall afternoon a week from Election Day. The moment of decision found one conservative couple, Joan and Frank Bark, lamenting the country’s direction.
โIโm afraid Trump has gotten so egotistical, itโs affecting his ability to make intelligent or more favorable decisions,” Frank said. But, he said, โI donโt want the decisions that would be generated from that far left side, either.โ
Joan, a retiree like her husband, said of Democrats: โI havenโt found very much that they want to change or work with. Itโs just mostly, โI hate Trump.โ” But Trump really isn’t on the ballot. They voted for Republican candidates.
In Nanuet, New York, people streamed into the small room of a community center to vote; some were in Halloween costumes. Primrose D. Sullivan, a nurse, is an independent. She scoffed at Trump’s wish that voters act as if he’s running.
โNo, because heโs not,โ she said. โWhen a patient comes into the hospital, you want me dealing in facts, not in, โHmm, let me act like you might have cancer.โ No. Do you or do you not have cancer? We need to proceed based on facts.โ She voted for Democrats.
Yet some see a cancer on politics, if not the presidency
Sullivan was among a number of voters who singled out the billionaires Trump has made common cause with and how that might feed into American decline.
โI donโt begrudge any of our wealthy people, Jeff Bezos or, you know, Elon Musk,โ she said. โBut I do have a certain problem with them wanting more and more and doing things that really donโt help humanity.โ
โIf we keep going the way these guys are going,โ she went on, meaning both the political and CEO classes, โweโre not going to have anything like what we had in the past.โ Theirs is a โself-destructive attitude,โ she added, โbecause, honestly, if the whole planet destroys itself, the wealthy go with us.โ
Outside the polling station at the YMCA in Fort Mill, South Carolina, Benjamin Updegraft offered a piercing denunciation of the elite as he traced his evolution from a โfull-throated young Republicanโ who voted for Trump as a young man in 2016 to a โlifetime Democrat,โ after casting his ballot in the Senate race.
He cited Musk’s throttling of his Starlink satellite internet service in Ukraine, which disrupted a key defense against Russian attacks, and Republican Vivek Ramaswamy’s ad in the Ohio governor’s race featuring the estranged mother of Democratic rival Amy Acton among the reasons powerful men must be brought to heel.
โThat needs to be cut out from this country like a cancer,โ Updegraft said. โWe have an incredible responsibility to take back the stranglehold that the worst people in this country have on the reins of power and to inflict punishment on them for their actions.โ
In Scottsdale, Arizona, David Lee described his conservative upbringing, his past voting for Republicans and now his decision to turn against that party and vote Democratic in the contested races for governors and the House. He considers Trump’s heavy-handed immigration enforcement to be lawless.
โNobody wants open borders, but youโre treating these people without due process, sending people to countries they donโt even belong to,โ said Lee, 63. โThereโs no more rules.โ
Then there are those prices. And that war
The Trump supporters interviewed by the AP at the polls signaled their tolerance of the surge of gas prices from the Iran war, in some cases blaming factors other than the actual cause. Nor did they break with him on the war itself.
Among them was David Stouffer, 59, branch manager for a mortgage bank and three-time Trump voter, who spoke outside the Harrisburg elections office. โIran has been killing Americans for 50 freaking years,โ he said. โYeah, Iโll suffer with some higher gas prices in the interim until they get that nonsense figured out.โ
Does that put a crunch on your household budget, Stouffer was asked. โOf course it does.โ How to cope with that? โI just keep driving.”
โHeโs made the tax cuts real,โ Stouffer said. โHe has secured the borders. That, to me, is a very, very big deal.โ
By the dozens, Democrats, independents and Republicans outside the core of Trumpโs support differed with that assessment, even as some of them granted the president his achievements on taxes and immigration.
Horner, the food importer, is going โbonkersโ with the tariffs and all the other moves bouncing between the Trump administration and the courts while a โfecklessโ and now electorally endangered Republican Congress largely stands aside.
โYou canโt do business when every month you have to readjust your pricing because the president gets a wild hair on something that heโs not even constitutionally allowed to do,โ Horner said. He added, โHeโs just playing out the clock on all of this stuff โ where you just know he knows itโs wrong.
โAnd what do we have? Higher healthcare, higher food, higher gas, a business environment that is complete chaos.โ
But Jerry Casner, 74, of Mechanicsburg, a suburb of Harrisburg, wants as much of Trump as he can get. Alas, โhe canโt run again,โ Casner noted.
โWell, technically,” Casner said, “he canโt run again.โ
___
Hanna reported from Topeka, Kan.; Levy from Harrisburg, Pa.; Catalini from Levittown, Pa.; and Woodward from Washington. Associated Press journalists Julie Carr Smyth in Wooster, Ohio; Erik Verduzco in Fort Mill, S.C.; Thomas Beaumont in Sioux City, Iowa; Joseph Frederick in Nanuet, N.Y.; Tassanee Vejpongsa in Warminster, Pa.; Mikella Schuettler in Scottsdale, Ariz.; and Sarah Rankin in Henrico, Va., contributed to this report.
