Trump voters weigh 'the unthinkable' with Sarah Longwell and Amy Walter
The Cook Political Report's editor in chief explains how she is rating races this fall, on a Saturday when two more Bulwark videos about Republican trouble also ran far ahead of usual.
The BulwarkStory of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 254,433 views a day, 15 times a normal first day on this channel (16,894).
These Trump Voters Are Considering the Unthinkable: Voting for a Democrat (Amy Walter) | Focus Group
The title promises voters who once backed Donald Trump now thinking about a Democrat, and that promise carried The Bulwark's newest Focus Group episode past 200,000 views in fifteen hours. A new video here usually ends its whole first day somewhere under 17,000.
Focus Group is Sarah Longwell's show, built on her habit of sitting swing voters down and letting them talk. This time her guest is Amy Walter, editor in chief of the Cook Political Report, the nonpartisan newsletter whose race ratings campaigns and reporters watch closely. The description sets the mood bluntly: it is October, and the climate is described as very bad for Republicans. Walter walks through how Cook is approaching its ratings this year, the two go through the growing list of reasons swing voters are unhappy, and they spend time on Michigan's Senate race, the subject of Longwell's latest focus group newsletter. The episode closes on a less expected question: how AI is changing what voters read and believe before an election.
The comments keep returning to one detail from the voters' complaints, gas and grocery prices, and many viewers debate whether long-time Republicans will really cross over.
It was not the only Bulwark video moving fast on Saturday. A segment with Will Saletan and Joe Perticone on Trump posting Sen. Tom Cotton's phone number over permanent daylight saving time started almost as quickly, and Catherine Rampell and Bill Kristol's look at a New York Times/Siena Senate poll was close behind.
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- Channel
- The Bulwark
- Subscribers
- 1,780,000
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 13,841,149
- Channel views, pace per day
- 1,025,954 (on a normal day: 1,979,454)
- Video published
- October 3, 2026
- Video views so far
- 202,535 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 254,433
The numbers
The figures below show how far this focus group conversation ran ahead of the channel's usual first day.
💡 Test your knowledge
Michigan, home of the Senate race discussed in this episode, borders how many of the five Great Lakes?
Michigan touches Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron and Erie; only Lake Ontario does not reach it.
