As Trump Returns, Meet Some Voters Unhappy With Both Parties

President Donald Trump began his second term this week in a swirl of activity, issuing promised directives on immigration, climate change, diversity in society and other policies aimed at overturning the work of the Biden administration.

He ordered the country to withdraw from the landmark Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization, sought to end birthright citizenship, issued pardons to defendants in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021 and has plans to deport unauthorized immigrants and impose stiff tariffs on imported goods.

He has said he will right an economy that many working class Americans feel has left them behind though critics say his proposals, from adding tariffs to removing climate change protections, could raise prices for consumers.

Trump is claiming a mandate after he won the popular vote in what he calls a landslide. An analysis of the results finds that his victory was slim, and the country remains dramatically divided politically.

Trump’s margin of victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in the national popular vote was 1.5 percentage points. That, according to The American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is the smallest of any president who did win the popular vote since Richard M. Nixon in 1968.

In Congress, Republicans won the House of Representatives by only five seats, and Trump could find himself struggling to implement policies he campaigned on.

Meanwhile Democrats are scrambling to decipher what went wrong for their party and how they will treat the second Trump administration. Who will lead them, what policies will they emphasize and where did they miss connecting with voters?

NBC talked to voters who found both parties, Democratic and Republican, lacking and who are looking for change. Some reject everything about Trump, others find him personally distasteful but are open to his policies and hopeful that his presidency might force a reckoning among Democrats. As Trump moves quickly to assert his vision of America on the country, here are their thoughts about the state of American politics in 2025.

Chantal Green

Chantal Green was unenthused with her choices when she voted in her first presidential election, with politicians moving to the right just as young people are shifting to the left, she said.

“This might be a bit dramatic — I was resigned to my fate, I suppose,” she said.

In the end, she cast her ballot for Kamala Harris though she was disappointed by the race the Democrats ran, beginning with how long it took for President Joe Biden to drop out. Harris had only 107 days to campaign, and then came up short across a range of issues, she said.

Green, who is 21, and a senior at Baruch College in New York City, moved to the United States from Jamaica when she was 2. She knew from a young age that she cared about news and current events, and once she finishes college she hopes to work as a journalist, maybe with a degree from graduate school.

Of Democrats, she said, “Party leaders should first and foremost make sure that people understand who and what they’re voting for, and who and what they’re voting against, and I feel like that wasn’t done.”

She thought Harris tried too hard to appeal to a range of voters, and ended up with a contradictory set of positions on the war in Gaza, transgender rights and climate change. On Gaza, for example, an issue Democrats struggled with, she found Harris unconvincing when she pledged she would push for an end to the conflict.

Harris said in July, after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that she had told him it was time for a ceasefire. She reiterated that Israel had a right to defend itself but promised not to be silent about suffering Gaza, where the Gaza health ministry says more than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli attacks.

A poll conducted by the Harvard Kennedy School, Institute of Politics, in March, found that young people favored a permanent ceasefire 5 to 1, but the devastating war continued for more than a year. Biden finally announced some success days before leaving office as negotiators from Israel and Hamas agreed to a cease-fire and the release of hostages, which Biden attributed to dogged and painstaking American diplomacy. Then president-elect Donald Trump also took credit for the deal, writing on social media that agreement was reached only because of his victory at the polls.

Green also faulted Harris for not speaking up enough for LGBTQ rights and thought her comment about whether transgender people should have access to gender affirming care — she told NBC’s Hallie Jackson “I believe we should follow the law” — was lacking.

“I am queer and non-binary, and so TO not see it come up in conversation at all, in any way, shape or form, and for that clip of the interview to be the only thing I heard about her and her stance and what she views, believes, was very disheartening,” Green said.

Nor did she think the pressing topic of climate change was addressed with enough urgency by Harris. The former vice president promoted work to shift the country to green energy but also said that she would not ban fracking and noted that the Biden-Harris administration had overseen the largest increase ever of domestic oil production to ensure the country would not have to rely on foreign oil.

“Climate change is not something that we can simply put to the side,” Green said. “It’s something that is a very present, pressing issue.”

In the end, Green believes Harris never had a chance even beyond whatever strengths voters found in Trump.

“Racism is still something that is embedded into the fabric of the country, to the point where having a Black Indian female president is simply not an achievable goal,” she said.

Andriana Yatsyshyn

Andriana Yatsyshyn voted in her first presidential election in November, but came away dispirited by the direction of the Democratic party, its move toward a moderate base to the exclusion of more democratic socialist ideas.

She added to that what she perceived as Harris’ unwillingness to engage in policy discussions in depth or sit for many interviews beyond ones with stars such as Oprah. Republicans in comparison seemed more focused and public about what policies they would want to implement, she said.

“That was the biggest shortcoming for me,” she said. “They weren’t particularly transparent about what her positions were.”

It was not a problem of outreach, she said. She thought Democrats successfully found her and her contemporaries on younger social media platforms, such as TikTok, and on podcasts, like Alexandra Cooper’s Call Her Daddy.

“She went on it and it stirred a conversation within the younger generation and that’s sort of what you want,” she said.

“The two party system has been effective for many, many years, and I think it can continue to be effective.”

Andriana Yatsyshyn, 19

Already unsettled by the foregone substitution of Kamala Harris for Joe Biden as the Democratic candidate, she said the Democratic Party fell down on sufficiently showcasing some issues her generation most cared about. One in particular was the economy, even the cost of basic economic needs such as rent and food, she said.

Other areas that she and her fellow students felt strongly about: education and the price of private universities, fundamental human rights and the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, she said.

“The one thing that Democrats do really push for is education,” she said.

Vice President Kamala Harris pushed back on claims from former President Donald Trump during Tuesday’s presidential debate that he could immediately end the war in Ukraine.

Yatsyshyn, 19, is a sophomore at the University of Southern California, where she is a journalism major with a minor in cinematic arts.

She was born and raised in New York City, attending performing arts schools and studying musical theater, film and dance. By her senior year of high school, she was making a transition to media and broadcast journalism, volunteering for a mayoral campaign and doing phone banking and canvassing for Biden’s successful 2020 presidential campaign.

“I still couldn’t vote at the time,” she said. “It was just super important to me to know who these people were that want to represent my neighborhood just because my neighborhood is so diverse. It’s a predominantly low-income neighborhood, so it was very important for me for our representatives to reflect those ideals.”

America’s two-party system has the disadvantage of being dominated by the views that often do not reflect what most people believe, she said. At the same time, she is skeptical that introducing more parties into the U.S. government would work better.

“The two party system has been effective for many, many years, and I think it can continue to be effective,” she said. “It’s just about diversifying both parties in general.”

As Democrats lean more moderate and Republicans move to the right, she worries that the Republican’s slim majority in Congress will mean four years of gridlock. Give politicians with less extreme views a platform, she said.

“I’m very fifty-fifty,” she said. “A part of me wants to be hopeful and hope that nothing super major will happen that will affect the quality of life of Americans. But I’m also not certain that it won’t.”

Muntaha Rashid

If Muntaha Rashid was discouraged by both the Democratic and Republican stances on Gaza, she also was not a one-issue voter and for her, Kamala Harris was the far better candidate.

Rashid, 19, called Donald Trump a fear monger who creates discord as he did with the false stories about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.

“He does this thing where he pits communities against each other and he says, ‘Oh, you know, the immigrants, they’re coming for your jobs, so we have to deport all the immigrants,’” she said.

“Buzzwords that try to create fear in the minds of others and that’s how he runs his whole election,” she said.

Trump’s victory is spotlighting how polarized the country is, and Rashid is worried now that Republicans control the White House and Congress and a conservative faction holds the majority on the Supreme Court. During Trump’s first term in office — when Republicans enacted large corporate tax cuts and solidified the conservative dominance of the Supreme Court and Trump started a trade dispute with China — he accomplished little to further what she believes in, she said.

She said his policies are rooted in hate, giving cover to extremist groups such as the Proud Boys, whose former leader Trump pardoned for his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

“Everything is red and everyone is essentially going to agree and follow Trump regardless of the ways in which people fight back and that’s just really, really concerning for me and I cannot imagine how the next four years are going to go,” she said.

Senators reacted to an executive order by President Trump that pardoned over 1,500 people charged with crimes in connection with the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Rashid, from New York, is majoring in intercultural and international communications at Baruch College. The child of Bengali immigrants, she may declare a second major in political science. She has a sister two years older and a brother 13 years younger.

Rashid believes neither candidate satisfactorily addressed the divisive issue of Gaza.

She wishes the United States would play more of a role of a peacemaker — a ceasefire alone is not enough, given the amount of military aid the United States sends to Israel.

According to the Costs of War Project at Brown University, the U.S. has spent $22.76 billion on Israel’s military operations and U.S. operations in the region in the year after the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023 — it should be using that leverage to help bring about a more lasting peace, she said.

Rashid knows that as a New Yorker, many of the rights that are important to her are secure, but she is worried about how the unsettled issue of abortion will play out, now that the Supreme Court has overturned the Roe v. Wade decision and the federal protections it provided. She wonders how the economy will benefit people like her. Meanwhile, she thought Trump, Harris and Biden while he was still in the race spent too much time denigrating one another rather than talking about what they would do.

Too little gets done in Washington because of political stalemates, she said. She is dismayed by the Republican focus on cultural issues, religion in particular.

“Here’s the thing, America, the whole point about America, is that we are a secular country,” she said.

Rashid cannot imagine a multi-party political system working in the United States because she thinks Americans are too set in their ways. That said, she is concerned about moderate Republicans not feeling free to reject Trump.

“These parties are becoming synonymous with people rather than actual values,” she said.

Christopher Casey and Samuel Casey

Samuel Casey considers himself an engaged, energized voter. His older brother, Christopher sees himself the same way, especially now that he has young children, a 7-year-old and 3-year-old. They vote, they had political internships in congressional offices, they’ve been involved in politics most of their lives.

But, Samuel Casey said, “Over the last few election cycles, I feel like the divisiveness in this country has made me less enthusiastic about going to the polls. And that is due to the liberal left and the far right and not as many moderate options in my opinion.”

He was frustrated by how Kamala Harris was chosen to replace President Joe Biden as the Democratic candidate against Donald Trump, as if she were picked by a few people in a back room, he said.

“So I was very unhappy with the Democratic options,” he said. “And I was not disappointed with Trump’s administration, around his policies, but I was disappointed in how he conducted himself in public interviews, and tweets. I thought his legislation was fine.”

Christopher Casey said he was 0-for-3 in the last three elections. He voted for three losing candidates: Hillary Clinton, then Trump against Biden, and now Harris.

“I’m socially left and fiscally right,” Christoper Casey said. Of Trump, he said, “I like a strong president. I do think he is a strong president, at times a little unhinged, but I think he’s strong.”

He had predicted Trump would win but not as solidly as he did, and Casey hopes this election is an eye-opener for Democrats.

“The Democrats just think, ‘We’ll just keep doing the same thing we’ve been doing and we’ll be fine. We’ll just coast by.’”

Even if Trump is not a good man, that does not necessarily make him a bad president, Christoper Casey said. He supports shoring up the U.S.’s southern border with Mexico and he is for smaller government and tax cuts. On abortion, he is not sure if a constitutional right exists but does not believe government has any role in a woman’s decision.

“I just don’t see any place for government or politics in those types of matters,” he said.

To those issues, Samuel Casey would add U.S. involvement in international affairs. He believes the U.S. is spending too much money on other country’s conflicts. If atrocities are occurring and the country needs to step in, it should be with the United Nations or NATO, side by side.

“We should not be involved in spreading democracy,” he said. “I feel like that is a part of the military industrial complex and we should be a little bit more isolationist.”

Christopher Casey wants a president focused on solving domestic problems at a time when the United States has enough issues of its own to address. Democrats now seem to him to be the party of elites, an accusation leveled at them during this past election in particular, not the party of the working class that he remembers from his childhood.

Both men live in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, where they grew up, just outside of Portland. Samuel Casey is 35, a graduate of the University of New England and a sales manager for a technology company. He is married to a public school teacher and has a 2-year-old daughter. Christopher Casey is 39, is in technology sales. A graduate of Providence College, he and his wife have two sons.

For both brothers, an overarching problem is the economy, the cost of living and inflation. Prices are higher at the gas pumps and in the grocery stores, and wages are not rising to match them, Samuel Casey said. Ordinary people are struggling to pay their bills even as economic indicators, data about jobs and a soaring stock market, look good, Christopher Casey said. The cost of education, for example, makes it unaffordable to many.

But the Democrats’ playbook was to criticize Trump rather than explain how they would tackle problems, Christopher Casey said. And too many politicians are emphasizing polarizing issues of interest to smaller slices of the population, Samuel Casey said. Of the Democrats decision to highlight abortion during the election, he pointed to the protections that do exist on the state level, and the support for reproductive health care even in many red states.

“I’m hoping with this new administration that the cost of goods may go down,” he said. “That’s wishful thinking but that’s a big issue for me.”

Christopher Casey was undecided up until the day of the election, but in the end voted for Harris. One reason was he considered what the founder of the outdoor clothing and gear company, Patagonia, Yvon Chouinard, urged: Vote for our home planet.

“I don’t think Trump is a proponent of Mother Earth,” he said. “I don’t want to be a doomsdayer but I feel like the damage is done. It’s here. We live in Maine. We ski. The ski mountains don’t get snow nearly like they did even 10 years ago.”

Added Samuel Casey, “We get worse winter storms and erosion along the coastline than we’ve ever had in the 30 years of my existence on this Earth, so I’m not going to deny climate change.”

Samuel Casey believes the United States must eliminate its reliance on foreign oil, even if that means drilling in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico and fracking in Pennsylvania. He is proponent of nuclear energy.

President Donald Trump said he plans to declare a National Energy Emergency, to open up drilling on American soil.

Both want more cooperation between the parties on even the smallest issues. Biden’s and Trump’s age contributed to the brothers’ lack of enthusiasm especially in light of what they called the young, vibrant, educated leaders of emerging tech companies.

“Our government is archaic, slow, old,” Samuel Casey said and it needs to modernize.

His brother is looking for the same kind of change from Trump.

“He thinks outside the box and that’s what I personally am looking for in a next gen government,” Christopher Casey said. “Give me new ideas. Let’s not just keep doing things the same way that we’ve always done them.”

Ingrid Meulemans

Ingrid Meulemans is a Midwesterner, a Wisconsin resident, a graduate of Grinnell College in Iowa, and it is through that prism that she views American politics.

She lives in a liberal stronghold of Milwaukee and for her, it was obvious that she would vote for Kamala Harris, who in some ways did address the issues she cares about, she said: gender rights, rights for queer people, climate laws and regulations, and reproductive health, particularly as Wisconsin moved toward anti-abortion positions after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

“The whole point about America is that we are a secular country.”

Muntaha Rashid, 19

She mistakenly thought Harris would win but she remained aware how passionately others opposed her, something she wonders if people on the coasts fully grasped. Not everyone, but in some areas of New York and Los Angeles, people live in their bubbles, she said.

“It’s an echo chamber of beliefs and conversations and they don’t really conceptualize that other people not only think differently, but are like extremely opposed and antagonistic,” she said.

Meulemans, who turns 25 at the end of January, has just defended her thesis for a master’s program in literature, working in a bookstore while she finished. She wrote about feminist theory and literary analysis through an examination of romance novels.

She knows that people in her circle were less than enthused about their choices in the last election, often backing Harris but with grievances about her positions on the war in Gaza and Palestinians or actions she took in the past as an assistant district attorney or the attorney general in California.

She thinks the country has regressed on many of the issues important to her, feminism for example, with the interest in “trad” or traditional wives and “girl math,” an internet meme young women use to defend their spending money.

“I think that people are being fed this subconscious messaging and they’re not realizing what they’re participating in,” she said. “They’re under the illusion that we’re past these issues. Well, that’s not true for all the issues that I had raised, definitely not climate, definitely not immigration.”

She believes people whose beliefs fall both on the right and the left are being fed information that is inaccurate, and are taking part in discussions that are not helpful. She would classify some of it as performative politics.

Nor does she have a sense that problems are getting better, that politicians and others are tackling them.

“I do have concerns about where we’re headed overall, but I feel like the concerns are less about the structure, the inherent value and structure of the system, and more about the values that are being associated with it now, the money, the privilege, wealth, and the fact that it just has become such a removed thing from many people’s everyday lives,” she said.

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