kick the tires

“You can’t kick the tires, look under the hood of the flight you’re taking or talk to the captain,” says Harding Bush, associate director for security operations at Global Rescue, a provider of security and travel risk management services.

“Each of the candidates have strong supporters. Each of the candidates are, at this point, relatively known quantities, but there’s also a group of people who are trying to kick the tires and hear and see who they want to align themselves with.”

“These voters want to see you, they want to be able to kick the tires, and a candidate that is willing to show up in rural counties and suburban areas, the whole nine yards, when you’re willing to do that, that helps,” he said.

“When Trump first announced his re-election bid last November I predicted that some evangelicals would ‘kick the tires’ of other candidates but would eventually coalesce around Trump as they did in 2016,” Jeffress said via email.

Scheffler said that while support for Trump remains solid, many evangelicals want to "kick the tires" and are open to another candidate.