Politics
Weighted vest women are the 2026 swing voters
One of Republicans’ most respected pollsters has identified an emerging group of swing voters who could help decide the 2026 midterms: Call them the weighted vest women.
They’re already flooding your social media feeds and neighborhoods — all while donning weighted vests, the latest fitness influencer fad of 2025. You don’t have to look far to find them. They’re covered on the pages of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop and can be seen in plenty of TikTok videos.
Christine Matthews — the pollster for former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s reelection campaign, former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels’ two campaigns and the president of Bellwether Research — first saw women wearing weighted vests all over her upscale neighborhood in Alexandria.
Matthews’ wanted answers to two simple questions: How many women were wearing weighted vests? And what were their politics? So she commissioned a poll of 1,000 women across the U.S., the results of which she shared exclusively with Blue Light News.
Matthews found that about one in six women wear this year’s hottest wellness accessory. But more importantly, the weighted vest women broke for President Donald Trump by three points in 2024.
Going into 2026, though, this group backs Republicans and Democrats equally at 47 percent in a generic congressional ballot. Among all women surveyed, 48 percent would vote for Democrats compared to 35 percent for Republicans.
“The people who swing elections, it always sort of comes down — in particular in midterms — to suburban women,” Matthews said in an interview with Blue Light News. “This, to me, is just a particularly interesting cohort that is a subset of that group that could swing these elections because they’re so engaged. They look like they’re definite midterm voters.”
These voters are “under age 45, have kids at home, and live in urban/suburban neighborhoods, [are] well-educated, higher-income and highly engaged with politics,” according to Matthews’ poll deck.
“While much more likely to ‘do their own research’ on health matters, they generally trust mainstream medicine and media,” according to the poll deck. “They aren’t vaccine skeptics or seed oil opponents. They are likely to be listening to a podcast while walking with a weighted vest. They are politically split.”
Matthews acknowledges that the weighted vest women comprise a small cohort, which could lead to a higher margin of error. “So we want to track them and get more data going forward,” she said.
More broadly, the poll found that 31 percent of Gen Z women disagree that vaccines are “generally safe,” and are turning to social media, influencers, podcasts and self-research over doctors and institutions for information. Gen Z women are twice as likely as Boomer women to be vaccine skeptics.
The survey also identified “a worrisome trend” among younger moms: 47 percent of moms to kids under 18 “primarily turn to doctors and the medical establishment for advice,” 32 percent “say they do their own research,” 15 percent “follow natural or holistic approaches” and 11 percent “rely on advice from friends/family.”
Some 71 percent of women say vaccines are safe. Democratic women are more confident about vaccine safety than Republican and independent women. Only 24 percent of Republican women strongly agree that vaccines administered in the U.S. are generally safe, while 49 percent of Democratic women strongly agree and 23 percent of independent women strongly agree. Meanwhile, 20 percent of GOP women and 16 percent of Democratic women say seed oils are unhealthy. And women who say seed oils are unhealthy are more likely to be vaccine skeptics.
It’s not yet clear what the defining issues for the weighted vest wearers in the midterms will be, and Matthews plans to commission more research about them in the coming weeks and months. But they appear to lean more conservative than the median voter.
“They have a modern diet of information that is heavily influenced by new media, social streams and podcasts,” Matthews said. “But it doesn’t cause them to go down weird fringe rabbit holes. It encourages them to adopt something like a weighted vest, but not, like, oppose vaccines.”
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Iran’s ambassador to Mexico praised the country’s national soccer team after its elimination from the FIFA World Cup, while also highlighting the controversial video review decisions that influenced the outcome of the tournament.
In a lengthy statement to Blue Light News, Ambassador Abolfazl Pasandideh argued that Iran battled not only its opponents but also “fatigue, injustice, and hardships that rarely appeared before the cameras,” later criticizing what he called “pseudo-VAR” interventions.
“Perhaps some balls fell just centimeters short of bringing joy to millions of Iranians — centimeters that were not even measured by the linesman’s flag, yet were magnified by ‘pseudo-VAR’ interventions,” Pasandideh wrote. “However, nothing could ever diminish the magnitude of your determination.“
FIFA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
He cast the team’s World Cup run in overtly patriotic terms, comparing the players to legendary Persian heroes including Arash and Rostam and arguing that “true championship lies in loyalty to the flag.”
Addressing the players as the “brave sons of Iran,” Pasandideh said they had demonstrated a willingness to give “the last drop of life for Iran” and predicted the national team would return “stronger, more experienced, and more brilliant” in future international competitions.
Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania has notched a lead in the 2028 World Cup primary, having attended three matches leading into the knockout round — just ahead of Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
In an interview with Blue Light News this week at the FIFA Fan Festival at Fairmount Park’s Lemon Hill, Shapiro reveled in Philadelphia’s host duties — and the World Cup more broadly.
“I’m especially proud to see people from all across the world coming here to Philadelphia and being greeted not just by a governor who’s happy they’re here, but by Philadelphians and Pennsylvanians who are thrilled to see them here,” Shapiro told Blue Light News in an interview. “I think we are better than [President] Donald Trump’s cruel rhetoric. We are better than his cruel policies, and I think we’re seeing that on display here during the World Cup in Philly.”
Here are the potential 2028 presidential hopefuls who have attended a World Cup game so far:
— Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro: 3 matches (Ivory Coast vs. Ecuador; France vs. Iraq; Curaçao vs. Ivory Coast)
— Secretary of State Marco Rubio: 2 matches (U.S. vs. Paraguay; Colombia vs. Portugal)
— California Gov. Gavin Newsom: 1 match (U.S. vs. Paraguay)
— Former Vice President Kamala Harris: 1 match (U.S. vs. Turkey)
— Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: 1 match (U.S. vs. Australia)
— Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis: 1 match (Scotland vs. Brazil)
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