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.”
Like this content? Consider signing up for Blue Light News’s Playbook newsletter.
Nexstar Media Group will continue to preempt “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on its ABC affiliates, the company said Tuesday, effectively pulling the late-night show from dozens of local stations as the comedian prepares to make his return to the airwaves.
The company noted it would “monitor” the show as it returns to ABC, but said its stations would “focus on continuing to produce local news and other programming relevant to their respective markets.” The move makes Nexstar the second broadcasting company to preempt the show, following suit after the Sinclair Broadcasting Group announced Monday it would not air the talk program on its nearly 40 ABC affiliates.
“We made a decision last week to preempt ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ following what ABC referred to as Mr. Kimmel’s ‘ill-timed and insensitive’ comments at a critical time in our national discourse,” the company wrote in a statement Tuesday. “We stand by that decision pending assurance that all parties are committed to fostering an environment of respectful, constructive dialogue in the markets we serve.”
Nexstar, the country’s largest local broadcasting group, owns roughly 30 ABC affiliates across cities like Nashville, Tenn., New Orleans and Salt Lake City. Sinclair also owns dozens of affiliates, including the ABC station serving Washington and its suburbs.
ABC parent Disney announced Monday it would resume airing “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” after deciding to suspend the show last week to “avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country.”
The show’s suspension sparked a flood of criticism from lawmakers and party leaders across the aisle, citing concerns about censorship — particularly after Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr threatened to look into affiliates because of the comedian’s comments.
Nexstar is currently seeking a merger with Tegna, which requires FCC approval.
“We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday,” Disney’s statement on Monday read.
House Democrats are going on the offense with tariffs and shutdown politics in swing districts, dropping TV ads against 10 vulnerable Republicans as Congress barrels toward an October government shutdown.
House Majority Forward, a nonprofit aligned with House Democratic leadership, is spending $3 million on broadcast TV and digital ads attacking Republicans on cost-of-living increases and cuts to Medicaid. Details of Tuesday’s ad buy were shared first with Blue Light News.
“They promised to lower prices, but you’re not imagining it — Republican tariffs are making everything more expensive,” one of the ad’s narrator says, over flashing images of grocery items. “Juan Ciscomani voted to let Trump make tariffs even worse and voted to make healthcare even more expensive. Now, Republicans in Congress are threatening to shut down the government, causing economic chaos.”
Ciscomani, a Republican member first elected in 2022, holds an Arizona House seat that Donald Trump also narrowly won last year.
The ads come as Congress faces a government shutdown stalemate, after the Senate rejected dueling short-term government funding proposals from both parties on Friday.
They also preview Democrats’ attack lines against Republicans ahead of the midterms. Public polling finds most Americans disapprove of Trump’s tariff policies. But Republicans maintain an edge over Democrats when voters are asked who they trust more on the economy, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll released over the weekend.
In addition to Ciscomani, the ads go after Reps. David Valadao of California, Gabe Evans of Colorado, Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Zach Nunn of Iowa, Tom Barrett of Michigan, Mike Lawler of New York, Rob Bresnahan and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin.
The ad airing against Van Orden features a Wisconsin-based influencer, Kate Duffy. Styled after a social media post, it will air vertically on broadcast TV, a first for the group.
Disney announced “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” will resume airing on Tuesday, ending Kimmel’s short-lived suspension following comments the host made on his show about the killing of Charlie Kirk.
In a statement released Monday, Disney said it suspended Kimmel last week “to avoid inflaming a tense situation.” The company received intense pressure from Trump allies, including Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, over Kimmel’s comments.
“Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country,” Disney said in the statement. “It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive.”
“We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday,” the statement continued.
Kimmel’s suspension set off a wave of criticism from leaders in both parties who were concerned about political censorship.
- Hegseth axes panels that encourages women to enter military
- Nexstar, joining Sinclair, will preempt Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show
- House Democrats go on offense with $3M ad blitz over tariffs, shutdown threat
- One of Trump’s biggest climate decisions is overdue
- How Arizona voters are set to put Mike Johnson in a corner
- Trump pushes Pam Bondi to pursue cases against his foes
- Pentagon, amid media clampdown, codifies restrictions on think tank events
- Pregnant women can still use Tylenol judiciously, says researcher
- Trump decries Tylenol use by pregnant women
- Nancy Mace and Cory Mills are still squabbling over censure vote
-
Uncategorized10 months ago
Bob Good to step down as Freedom Caucus chair this week
-
The Josh Fourrier Show11 months agoDOOMSDAY: Trump won, now what?
-
Politics7 months agoFormer ‘Squad’ members launching ‘Bowman and Bush’ YouTube show
-
The Dictatorship7 months agoPete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon goes from bad to worse
-
Politics11 months agoWhat 7 political experts will be watching at Tuesday’s debate
-
The Dictatorship7 months agoLuigi Mangione acknowledges public support in first official statement since arrest
-
Politics11 months agoHow Republicans could foil Harris’ Supreme Court plans if she’s elected
-
Politics7 months agoBlue Light News’s Editorial Director Ryan Hutchins speaks at Blue Light News’s 2025 Governors Summit