One in all Republicans’ most revered pollsters has recognized an rising group of swing voters who may assist determine the 2026 midterms: Name them the weighted vest girls.
They’re already flooding your social media feeds and neighborhoods — all whereas donning weighted vests, the most recent health influencer fad of 2025. You don’t need to look far to search out them. They’re coated on the pages of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop and may be seen in loads of TikTok movies.
Christine Matthews — the pollster for former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s reelection marketing campaign, former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels’ two campaigns and the president of Bellwether Analysis — first noticed girls sporting weighted vests throughout her upscale neighborhood in Alexandria.
Matthews’ wished solutions to 2 easy questions: What number of girls have been sporting weighted vests? And what have been their politics? So she commissioned a ballot of 1,000 girls throughout the U.S., the outcomes of which she shared solely with POLITICO.
Matthews discovered that about one in six girls put on this 12 months’s hottest wellness accent. However extra importantly, the weighted vest girls broke for President Donald Trump by three factors in 2024.
Going into 2026, although, this group backs Republicans and Democrats equally at 47 % in a generic congressional poll. Amongst all girls surveyed, 48 % would vote for Democrats in comparison with 35 % for Republicans.
“The people who swing elections, it always sort of comes down — in particular in midterms — to suburban women,” Matthews stated in an interview with POLITICO. “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,” based on Matthews’ ballot deck.
“While much more likely to ‘do their own research’ on health matters, they generally trust mainstream medicine and media,” based on the ballot 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 girls comprise a small cohort, which may result in the next margin of error. “So we want to track them and get more data going forward,” she stated.
Extra broadly, the ballot discovered that 31 % of Gen Z girls disagree that vaccines are “generally safe,” and are turning to social media, influencers, podcasts and self-research over docs and establishments for info. Gen Z girls are twice as possible as Boomer girls to be vaccine skeptics.
The survey additionally recognized “a worrisome trend” amongst youthful mothers: 47 % of mothers to children underneath 18 “primarily turn to doctors and the medical establishment for advice,” 32 % “say they do their own research,” 15 % “follow natural or holistic approaches” and 11 % “rely on advice from friends/family.”
Some 71 % of girls say vaccines are secure. Democratic girls are extra assured about vaccine security than Republican and impartial girls. Solely 24 % of Republican girls strongly agree that vaccines administered within the U.S. are usually secure, whereas 49 % of Democratic girls strongly agree and 23 % of impartial girls strongly agree. In the meantime, 20 % of GOP girls and 16 % of Democratic girls say seed oils are unhealthy. And girls who say seed oils are unhealthy usually tend to be vaccine skeptics.
It’s not but clear what the defining points for the weighted vest wearers within the midterms might be, and Matthews plans to fee extra analysis about them within the coming weeks and months. However they seem to lean extra conservative than the median voter.
“They have a modern diet of information that is heavily influenced by new media, social streams and podcasts,” Matthews stated. “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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