Alienated by Trump, suburban voters sour on GOP in battle for House

Interviews with more than two dozen party officials, strategists and voters in areas like these help explain what recent polls have found: that Mr. Trump’s strategy is alienating independent and even some conservative voters — particularly women and better-educated Americans — who are turned off by his partisan appeals and disappointed in his leadership. From the suburbs of St. Louis to Omaha to Houston, they expressed deep concern about Mr. Trump’s approach to twin national crises, lamenting his confident declarations that the coronavirus was under control and his move to stoke racial divides after nationwide protests over police brutality against Black Americans…

[S]ome voters who in the past supported Mr. Trump and his Republican allies said they had seen subtle shifts in recent months among their co-workers and friends. People who had once shied away from any political commentary were now openly criticizing the failures in the pandemic response, they said, or displaying “Black Lives Matter” signs and posters outside their homes…

In Texas, where Democrats are targeting five seats that once were Republican strongholds explicitly gerrymandered to capture large sections of the suburbs, some steadfast conservative voters are now preparing to cast their first votes for Democratic congressional candidates, infuriated by the administration’s handling of the pandemic.

Cass Mattison and his wife, Samantha Mattison, who live in Sugar Land, just southwest of Houston, are registered Republicans, but they both plan to vote for Sri Kulkarni, a Democratic former Foreign Service officer running to replace Representative Pete Olson, a Republican who is retiring. They cite their party’s “very poor handling” of the pandemic “from top to bottom.”