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In 2024, the voters who knew the least about politics were some of Donald Trump’s strongest supporters. A Data for Progress poll released just before the election found Americans who didn’t consume any news at all said they’d vote for Trump over Kamala Harris by a 20-point margin, 60% to 40%.

In February, we reported that many of these voters had soured on Trump. Voters who couldn’t name the party in control of Congress moved away from Trump at about twice the rate as high-information voters. But approval isn’t vote choice. With the midterms less than two weeks away, it is worth asking if these voters are turning against the president’s party in federal elections, too.

In our October Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll, conducted Oct. 13–19 among 2,028 U.S. adults, we asked respondents two factual questions about politics: which party has the most members in the House, and which has the most members in the Senate. I classified anyone who got at least one of these questions wrong as “low-knowledge.” About 30% of adults miss at least one question, including 25% of 2024 Trump voters, 22% of Harris voters, and more than half of people who didn’t vote in 2024.

In this article, I do two things with this data. First, I repeat my February analysis and compare how these two groups feel about Trump’s job as president; then I look at each group’s voting behavior in the upcoming House midterms. Register for free to read the rest of this piece.

In 2024, the voters who knew the least about politics were some of Donald Trump’s strongest supporters. A Data for Progress poll released just before the election found Americans who didn’t consume any news at all said they’d vote for Trump over Kamala Harris by a 20-point margin, 60% to 40%.

In February, we reported that many of these voters had soured on Trump. Voters who couldn’t name the party in control of Congress moved away from Trump at about twice the rate as high-information voters.

But approval isn’t vote choice. With the midterms less than two weeks away, it is worth asking if these voters are turning against the president’s party in federal elections, too.

In our October Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll, conducted Oct. 13–19 among 2,028 U.S. adults, we asked respondents two factual questions about politics: which party has the most members in the House, and which has the most members in the Senate. I classified anyone who got at least one of these questions wrong as “low-knowledge.” About 30% of adults miss at least one question, including 25% of 2024 Trump voters, 22% of Harris voters, and more than half of people who didn’t vote in 2024.

In this article, I do two things with this data. First, I repeat my February analysis and compare how these two groups feel about Trump’s job as president; then I look at each group’s voting behavior in the upcoming House midterms.

First, the approval rating comparison. My findings from February hold. Low-knowledge 2024 voters say they backed Trump by 8 points, according to our poll. Today they give him a net job approval of −27, a 35-point shift. Compare that to Trump’s approval rating among voters who got both questions right: These voters backed Harris by 1 point and now give Trump a net −24 approval, a 23-point shift. Low-information voters have moved against Trump at a higher rate than high-information voters, by 12 points. The size of this shift is unlikely to be explained by statistical noise.

When compared to our plot from February (below), you can see that low-information voters have actually overtaken high-information voters in their anti-Trump-ness.

The 12-point gap in movement among the groups is identical across these surveys. This gap shows up in vote intention for Congress, too.

The less Trump voters know, the more they cross over First, consider a similar chart to the one above. This shows each group’s change from recalled Trump margin in 2024 to Democratic margin on the generic ballot here in 2026:

Low-knowledge 2024 voters backed Trump by 8 points. Today they favor Democrats for the House by 12, a 19-point swing (using unrounded figures). Voters who got both questions right backed Harris by 1 point and now favor Democrats by 7, a 7-point swing. That means low-information voters have swung toward Democrats almost three times as far as high-information voters. As with approval, the gap is too big to chalk up to statistical noise.

Among self-described 2024 Trump voters, 18% of those who missed a question on our mini-quiz plan to vote for the Democrat in their House race, vs 6% of those who got both right. If you ignore people who say they are not sure how they’ll vote or that they won’t participate at all, Democrats win 21% of low-knowledge Trump voters and 6% of high-knowledge ones.

Voters who got both knowledge questions wrong are even less GOP-leaning. They break 55% for Republican congressional candidates, 30% for Democrats, and 15% are not sure how/if they’ll vote.

Why low-information voters have moved away from Trump Low-knowledge Trump voters give him lower net approval than high-knowledge Trump voters on every one of the 13 issues we track in our poll. On prices, they disapprove of his handling by 24 points, while high-knowledge Trump voters approve by 4. It’s the only issue where low-knowledge Trump voters are net negative.

But even on Trump’s signature issues, low-knowledge supporters are far cooler toward him. Their net approval of his handling of immigration is +34, vs +74 among high-knowledge Trump voters. On border security, it’s +46 vs +81, and on deportations +33 vs +72. The pattern holds for AI, health care, foreign policy, and more. Low-information Trump voters show a largely uniform shift away from him:

Their attachment to the GOP is thin, too. Only 35% of low-knowledge Trump voters say the Republican Party cares more about people like them, vs 69% of high-knowledge Trump voters. And this may even be coloring the group’s recollection of past voting trends: when we asked respondents this month who they voted for in 2024, 8% of low-knowledge 2024 Trump voters said they actually voted for Harris (instead of the Trump vote they recorded in their past surveys for Verasight), vs 1.5% of high-knowledge Trump voters.

As a final consideration, the plot below shows rankings of respondents’ most important problems for the high- and low-information Trump voters. Low-info voters care more about prices than high-info voters:

Finally, here’s what this means for the midterms and beyond.

Elasticity is a threat to all majorities. Parties must provide durable, positive change or they’ll be tossed out. Perhaps the patterns covered in this piece are a result of anti-incumbency bias, or maybe it’s just simple elasticity among low-engagement voters.

It is well documented in political science that the least-informed voters are the most likely to switch parties from one presidential election to the next. People with more political information have the partisan filters to resist news that cuts against their side, so their views stay put. They see politics through the lens of highly calibrated ideological labels and partisan filter bubbles, cognitive heuristics that are often unavailable to voters with less information about politics. But people with less political knowledge can have their views shaped by broader economic and political conditions.

There is strong evidence for the elastic/reactive vote theory in this polling. As I’ve written before, low-knowledge voters didn’t back Trump in 2024 because they bought into MAGA. They backed him because prices were high and Democrats were in charge. Prices are still high, so it stands to reason that since Republicans are now in charge, the low-information group would move left — regardless of who they voted for last time.

In 2024, the voters who knew the least about politics helped put Trump back in the White House. This year, the relationship between political knowledge and party vote has inverted; the lowest-information Americans lean more Democratic than voters who know the most about politics. As I’ve shown with other polling, I think the simplest explanation here is that group was frustrated with high costs in 2024, decided to sample Trump as a potential fix, and now solidly regret that choice.

If the polls are right, in just ten days, Democrats will be swept into power in the House and may even capture the Senate. If they do control Congress, it will be due to gains they’ve made with these elastic, reactive, largely apolitical low-information voters. They should be careful not to misunderstand what this victory would stem from: frustration at the incumbent and a demand for change.

If Democrats can’t deliver in 2026 — and especially after 2028, when Democrats will have a shot to win the presidency and therefore be unconstrained by President Trump’s veto power — it’s likely these voters will just swing back to the right again.