Is regret setting in among Trump supporters? Not really, says CNN’s chief data analyst Harry Enten, who pushed back against the growing narrative that 2024 Trump voters are having second thoughts.
Citing new polling data from YouGov, Enten revealed that only 2% of Republican voters say they would vote differently in a hypothetical rematch between Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. Just 1% said they wouldn’t vote at all.
“I hear all these stories, all these articles, all the Trump voters, saying they regret what they did back in 2024,” Enten said on CNN. “I’m here to tell you, very few of them regret what they did.”
Even as polls show Trump facing backlash over the state of the economy—54% of respondents in a CBS survey blamed him for the downturn—Enten emphasised that the discontent hasn’t significantly chipped away at his support base.
“If there’s some idea out there that Trump voters are going around, saying ‘Man, I wish I had voted for Kamala Harris instead of Donald Trump,’ the numbers say that is a fanciful universe. It really, for the most part, does not exist,” Enten added.
He also pointed out that loyalty among Harris supporters remains strong, with little sign of voter defection on either side. In fact, voter regret was slightly higher in February 2017, when 4% of Trump voters said they’d have voted differently—double today’s number.
Meanwhile, the Republican Party’s image has seen modest improvement. A recent poll shows Republicans now leading Democrats by 2 points in voter satisfaction, a reversal from 2017 when Democrats held a 5-point edge. That trend is consistent with the GOP’s performance in the 2024 midterms, where they regained control of the House.
Though Trump’s overall approval rating remains underwater, Enten cautioned Democrats against assuming they’ll benefit by default. “Pitting two people’s popularity against each other produces a different result than asking to judge them in isolation,” he said.
