President Donald Trump's supporters, including voters who have backed him three times, are "rumbling" louder about the missteps of his second administration, a GOP pollster found.

In a Thursday article for The Bulwark, pollster Sarah Longwell—a veteran Republican strategist who co-founded the outlet and has convened focus groups of Trump voters on a rolling basis for years—shared comments from Trump voters who participated in a focus group, where they were asked to grade his second administration.

"Groups of straight-up Republicans, many of whom voted for Trump three times in a row, are feeling deflated and disappointed," Longwell wrote, citing discontent with how the president has handled immigration, the cost of living, and the war in Iran.

Longwell said she "started hearing rumblings of this back in the spring," but that "the rumblings got a bit louder" during focus groups she conducted over the last three weeks in South Carolina and Florida—two red states with important midterm elections coming up. Both states have governor's races and U.S. Senate seats on the 2026 ballot, a midterm cycle in which control of the House and Senate will be at stake, making the mood of loyal Republican voters a key variable for the party.

"Lots of people still perfunctorily express that they wish he'd just behave himself," Longwell wrote. "But compared to Trump's first term—or to what Republicans said during Joe Biden's presidency—what I'm hearing now is more concrete, focused criticism of Trump's policies." Her focus-group findings track with national polling, which has generally shown Trump's approval rating below 50 percent during his second term.

One participant, a Trump voter named Angie, gave the president a C grade, even though he acted "pretty hard and pretty fast" on immigration, as she had wanted.

"I feel like he lost focus after the initial push, and it almost seems to come with the war in Iran," Angie said. "It seemed like he lost his focus and then just threw everything at the war instead of focusing more on what the country needs and what the people of the country need."

Another voter, Dawn, said she was less confident that Trump had a real plan for the Iran war. The United States entered the conflict in June 2025 with airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear sites, and Trump announced a ceasefire between Israel and Iran days later.

"Initially he comes out, and he says, 'Okay, I'm gonna block the Strait of Hormuz because I do not want Iran—you know...we're not going to nuclear war,'" Dawn said. "And then there's just like no rhyme or reason. I mean, we're going back and forth, and there's firing...It just doesn't make any sense. It's just so nonsensical."

A third voter, Dustin, said he was tired of hearing Trump hype up the stock market. His frustration echoes a broader squeeze on household budgets: grocery prices remain more than 20 percent higher than they were before the pandemic, even as overall inflation has slowed from its 2022 peak.

"You can throw the stock market all you want, but at the end of the day, groceries are up—I have four kids...Try feeding a family of four. I spend over $1,000 a month on groceries, and we don't eat out, right?" Dustin said.