By Sarah Nagle

In January of 2017, I watched the presidential inauguration of surprise-winner Donald Trump on my television in Marin County. On Monday, I am watching the even less expected, and more unlikely, second inauguration of Trump live from Washington, D.C.

Last year, I was one of the 24,054 Marin voters who voted for Trump in the general election. I’m currently one of roughly 21,000 registered Republican voters in Marin County.

The last time I was in Washington, I was a little girl being pushed around the zoo in a stroller by my dad. Ronald Reagan was president.

Marin has been a Democrat stronghold for nearly my entire adult life. But even in a one-party county there are people who are genuine swing voters, and there are people who don’t like to be bound by the conventions of any major political party.

Nationwide, those people rather decisively helped decide last year’s presidential election.

Realistically, my vote last year, as a Republican in a politically “blue” county like Marin — in California, which hasn’t been a swing state for decades — was not relevant as a part of the national election story.

However, while my choices may be an outlier in Marin, the county voters who chose Trump last year are representative of America as a whole.

Statistically speaking, at least 4,000 Marin voters who are not registered Republicans voted for the Republican candidate for president.

The motivations of crossover voters are always a mystery to every one other than the individual. This cycle, it feels like the motivations of voters in general were a mystery to the “old guard” establishment of professional pollsters and paid television commentators.

As a demographic outlier (I’m a single, never-married, college-educated, White female under the age of 50, who also happens to be a registered Republican living in one of the bluest counties in California), I can only make educated guesses about what propelled Trump’s unexpected political comeback in 2024.

Anecdotally, I can say that he was the crowd favorite at the Republican booth at the California State Fair back in 2023. As a volunteer doing outreach, I immediately saw the disconnect between the stories voters told me and the stories in my media feed.

As volunteers in 2023, we were told not to push any particular candidate, we were just there to ask voters what they wanted. But, as early as 2023, Trump was clearly favored.

A year ago, most people supposedly in the know assumed the Republican primary election would leave the eventual nominee too bruised to present well in the general election. Barely a few weeks into 2025, the twists and turns of 2024 seem distant and historic.

Right now, the fires burning in Los Angeles seem more important than most of last year. Looking back at the people I met in 2023 and 2024, I think a persistent concern over the everyday issues of their own lives — inflation, crime, public schools coming up short — and the bigger issue of a national government that seemed incapable of adequately responding to homefront issues (like the aftermath of Hurricane Helene) drove a lot of swing voters.

Now, as I’m preparing to watch an inauguration in person for the first time, I’m thinking about the personal stories that got lost in the narrative for the last couple of years. Last year, millions of people made millions of personal decisions that resulted in Trump’s election.

The next few hours (much less the next few years) are a mystery to me. I’m looking forward to hearing Trump speak. But, I’m also convinced that one of the main reasons that he will be, in future history books, both our 45th and 47th president, is because not enough people were listening to basic voters last year.

Whether we, as a nation, can come together over the next few years probably has less to do with the pageantry of a major speech than it does with whether we make the effort to learn to listen to each other.

Sarah Nagle, of Novato, has 20 years experience in the retail industry and a degree in American history.