Hey there. It is the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting.

I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent.

And ahead of this year's midterm elections, we've been checking in monthly with swing voters, people who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and went for Donald Trump in

2024. Today on the show, we head to Michigan. And actually, before we get into what we

heard from this group of voters, I do want to get into why we're doing this on a regular basis or

what we're hoping to glean from it. Because this small group of voters, 12 voters this time around, not statistically significant, right? But we're hoping to glean from it because this small group of voters, 12 voters this time around,

not statistically significant, right? But what, I guess, what are you hoping to kind of glean

from something like this? Well, mostly just how folks are thinking about what's happening in the

country. I mean, you can't draw any broad conclusions, but you can hear people sort of talk out how they're feeling, why they feel that way, what they're frustrated about, especially with open-ended questions. If you just ask someone, like, what are you most worried about? Like, you can draw a lot from that question. And so that's part of the reason, you know, I particularly like hearing from voters and focus groups. What about you, Mara?

Yeah, I think that focus groups are often described as the why, not the what.

We know from polls, national polls, that the majority of Americans are not supportive of the war in Iran.

We know that.

But here we get to find out why.

They explain their feelings.

And it's so much richer than just the top lines of a

telephone poll. Well, let's get into what they talked about, because I have to imagine that Iran

was top of mind for a lot of these voters. Tell me more. I mean, overwhelmingly when the

moderator who was Rich Tao from Engages, that's a market research firm that we partner with,

as well as Sago on this project, he always asked people at the top, like, what is most concerning you right now? And overwhelmingly, for maybe the exception of one or two people out of the 12 that were in these two focus groups, they said the war, the fact that America is getting in another war. People said different versions of it, but that came up each and pretty much every time.

You know, again, this isn't statistically significant, but out of the 12 people, nine said that

they disapprove. So just a picture of the voters who participated here. Out of the 12, most of them

described themselves as independence. There were two that described themselves as Democratic or

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