{"id":13465,"date":"2025-09-19T14:02:23","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T14:02:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/weighted-vest-women-are-the-2026-swing-voters\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T14:02:23","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T14:02:23","slug":"weighted-vest-women-are-the-2026-swing-voters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/weighted-vest-women-are-the-2026-swing-voters\/","title":{"rendered":"Weighted vest women are the 2026 swing voters"},"content":{"rendered":"
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One of Republicans\u2019 most respected pollsters has identified an emerging group of swing voters who could help decide the 2026 midterms: Call them the weighted vest women.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re already flooding your social media feeds and neighborhoods \u2014 all while donning weighted vests, the latest fitness influencer fad of 2025. You don\u2019t have to look far to find them. They\u2019re covered on the pages of Gwyneth Paltrow\u2019s Goop<\/u><\/a> and can be seen in plenty of TikTok videos<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Christine Matthews \u2014 the pollster for former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan\u2019s reelection campaign, former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels\u2019 two campaigns and the president of Bellwether Research \u2014 first saw women wearing weighted vests all over her upscale neighborhood in Alexandria.<\/p>\n

Matthews\u2019 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<\/u><\/a> across the U.S., the results of which she shared exclusively with Blue Light News.<\/p>\n

Matthews found that about one in six women wear this year\u2019s hottest wellness accessory. But more importantly, the weighted vest women broke for President Donald Trump by three points in 2024.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people who swing elections, it always sort of comes down \u2014 in particular in midterms \u2014 to suburban women,\u201d Matthews said in an interview with Blue Light News. \u201cThis, to me, is just a particularly interesting cohort that is a subset of that group that could swing these elections because they\u2019re so engaged. They look like they\u2019re definite midterm voters.\u201d<\/p>\n

These voters are \u201cunder age 45, have kids at home, and live in urban\/suburban neighborhoods, [are] well-educated, higher-income and highly engaged with politics,\u201d according to Matthews\u2019 poll deck.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile much more likely to \u2018do their own research\u2019 on health matters, they generally trust mainstream medicine and media,\u201d according to the poll deck. \u201cThey aren\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Matthews acknowledges that the weighted vest women comprise a small cohort, which could lead to a higher margin of error. \u201cSo we want to track them and get more data going forward,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

More broadly, the poll found that 31 percent of Gen Z women disagree that vaccines are \u201cgenerally safe,\u201d 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. <\/p>\n

The survey also identified \u201ca worrisome trend\u201d among younger moms: 47 percent of moms to kids under 18 \u201cprimarily turn to doctors and the medical establishment for advice,\u201d 32 percent \u201csay they do their own research,\u201d 15 percent \u201cfollow natural or holistic approaches\u201d and 11 percent \u201crely on advice from friends\/family.\u201d <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have a modern diet of information that is heavily influenced by new media, social streams and podcasts,\u201d Matthews said. \u201cBut 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like this content? Consider signing up for Blue Light News’s <\/i>Playbook newsletter<\/i><\/a>. <\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of Republicans\u2019 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\u2019re already flooding your social media feeds and neighborhoods \u2014 all while donning weighted vests, the latest fitness influencer fad of 2025. You don\u2019t have to look far […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13465\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}