I have lifelong friends who voted for Trump. They don't pay much attention to politics

[andym]

62. Excitement and hope of big change tends to win over stay-the-course except during economic booms

unless the economy is doing really well. Reagan and Clinton both won second terms during economic booms.
Gore won the popular vote, and would have likely won the election in 2000 had Florida recounted one more time, the economy was good, but Year 2k fears did create enough economic anxiety to allow a weak change candidate like Bush to do well enough to win.

Obama was a change candidate versus McCain, though neither was an incumbent on the eve of the Great Recession.

Obama was more of a change candidate than Romney, even though he was already President.

Trump touted himself as the change candidate in 2016 as you described-- he lost the popular vote similarly to Romney and only won the election because rust belt citizens in PA, MI, and WI were not doing as well as previously after loss of manufacturing jobs in the years after the Great Recession.

Biden beat Trump because Biden was the change candidate from the chaos and incompetence of Trump during the uncertainty of Covid.

Kamala ran mostly against Trump's chaos and as a continuation of Biden, but Biden's favorability was at 40% due to higher cost-of-living from the after effects of Covid. Voters were very apprehensive about the economy and Trump's volatility made him more of a change candidate than Kamala who proposed what were evolutionary changes to Joe's policies rather than Trump's extreme ideas of tariffs and deportations.