Why these swing voters say they’re frustrated with Trump
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.4 • 25.7K Ratings
🗓️ 22 January 2026
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, political correspondent Ashley Lopez, and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson.
This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.
Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast for Thursday, January 22nd, 2026. I'm Miles Parks and I cover voting. |
| 0:11.2 | I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. |
| 0:16.0 | And we are taping this at 106 p.m. on Thursday. And today on the show, we are hearing directly from a very |
| 0:22.2 | important group of voters. And introducing a new recurring segment for the podcast, which we're |
| 0:28.0 | super excited about. Ashley, you and Mara have put this all together. We are talking specifically |
| 0:33.3 | about swing voters. These are voters who voted for Joe Biden in 2020, Donald Trump in 2024. |
| 0:40.0 | This is the holy grail for political reporters. Tell us more. Right. So NPR is partnering with |
| 0:45.9 | Engages and Sago, which are messaging experts and market researchers. And a big part of what they do is |
| 0:51.3 | just try to figure out why people feel the way they feel about something. And Rich Tao at Engages, who came to NPR with this passion project of his partners |
| 0:59.5 | with a media company to get a sense of what swing voters in swing states are thinking about |
| 1:03.9 | when it comes to the news. And I mean, there's a couple reasons of why this is super helpful |
| 1:07.9 | to political reporters like Mara and I. For one, you know, we don't |
| 1:13.4 | really know sometimes like what news and what messages get to voters. And that is a big part of what |
| 1:19.4 | this discussion is. It's like, what news are you hearing and how are you hearing it? Where are you |
| 1:23.1 | getting your information from? Another piece of this is like, you know, from the perspective of a political |
| 1:27.8 | reporter, you know, when you go out into the campaign trail, meet voters, like the way you're meeting |
| 1:32.2 | voters, like there are people you just don't get to. And so if you think of things like political rallies, |
| 1:38.4 | canvassing, political events of any kind, those are already people who are either in a camp |
| 1:43.4 | or pretty close to being solidly in a camp. And these are people who are either in a camp or pretty close to being |
| 1:44.7 | solidly in a camp. And these are voters that are not in camps. And they're pretty persuadable, |
| 1:50.6 | which is also a part of the electorate that is harder to find. So we are hearing straight |
| 1:54.0 | from the horse's mouth, not just that they approve or disapprove something, but why? |
... |
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