Suburban women who wear weighted vests could help Donald Trump win next year’s midterm elections, according to a poll.
Female voters who wear the health accessory backed Mr Trump in last year’s election but are on the fence going into 2026, the survey found.
Weighted vests are the latest trend to sweep social media, with fitness influencers sporting them as they exercise to boost their endurance and stamina.
They have been spotted on celebrities including Kaia Gerber, Jessica Alba, Matthew McConaughey and Guy Fieri, as well as swathes of TikTok and Instagram influencers.
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2009 Social media is the biggest influence on those who wear weighted vests
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The survey, commissioned by one of America’s most respected conservative pollsters, asked female devotees of the fitness trend to determine how suburban women will vote in the midterm elections.
Christine Matthews, the president of Bellwether Research, came up with the idea when she saw dozens of women wearing weighted vests in her affluent neighbourhood of Alexandria, Virginia.
“The people who swing elections, it always sort of comes down – in particular in midterms – to suburban women,” she told 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.”
The survey of 1,000 women found that one in six wore a weighted vest, 53 per cent of whom voted for Mr Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
However, ahead of next year’s midterm elections, the cohort was evenly split with 47 per cent backing the Republicans and the same percentage planning to vote Democrat. The rest were undecided.
‘Proxy’ for suburban swing voters
The poll found that women who wore weighted vests were more conservative. But just 35 per cent of all women surveyed backed the GOP, compared to 48 per cent who said they would vote Democrat.
The Republicans currently hold a razor-tight six-seat majority in the House of Representatives and face having their legislative agenda blocked by Democrats if the chamber flips.
Ms Matthews found that the health accessory worked as a useful proxy for suburban swing voters, as adherents tended to be “under age 45, have kids at home, and live in urban/suburban neighbourhoods, [are] well-educated, higher-income and highly engaged with politics”, according to her poll deck.
“While much more likely to ‘do their own research’ on health matters, they generally trust mainstream medicine and media,” the poll found. “They aren’t vaccine sceptics or seed oil opponents. They are likely to be listening to a podcast while walking with a weighted vest. They are politically split.”
It is not yet clear what the defining voter issues are for weighted vest wearers, but the media they consume is “heavily influenced by new media, social streams and podcasts,” Ms Matthews said.
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2009 Health seems to be a key motivator
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She said that although this may have encouraged them to adopt a weighted vest, it had not led them down “weird fringe rabbit holes” like alternative medicine and rejecting mainstream treatments, including vaccines.
Ms Matthews acknowledged that the study only polled a small sample of women who wore weighted vests, increasing the margin of error. She said more data was needed.
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