Democrats Face Steep Losses by Ignoring Less Politically Engaged Americans and Doing so Could Seal Their Fate
A grim new report for Democrats just emerged, with the Democratic data firm Catalist releasing its autopsy of the 2024 election and proving conservatives are right about the strong political realignment taking place under President Donald Trump.
The report provides strong evidence that the so-called Obama Coalition – a unified group of working-class, young and minority voters — has moved to the right and less politically active Americans are at the heart of this shift.
The DNC’s neglect of less politically active voters, and subsequent losses with the working-class, young, and minority voters in the last election are part of the same thread. The modern Democratic Party has crafted its radical message with a small, highly politically active group of liberals in mind and alienated everyone else.
Kamala Harris significantly underperformed Joe Biden’s modest 2020 numbers with moderate and low propensity voters according to Catalist’s data, locking in her loss, considering low and moderate activity voters are the majority.
Harris underperformed Joe Biden by 7 points — 48 percent to 55 percent — among moderately active voters who had voted in only one or two recent elections. She also underperformed Joe Biden by 6 points among the lowest propensity voters who had voted in no recent elections, taking just 48 percent of their vote compared to Biden’s 54 percent.
Harris’s numbers approached Biden’s with higher activity voters who had voted in three of the four most recent elections — she fell short of Biden’s numbers by 3 points, 50 percent to 53 percent. However, the only group Harris narrowly surpassed Biden with was highly active voters who had voted in every single recent election for the past four cycles. In this group, Harris outperformed Biden by a single point, 50 percent to 49 percent.
The fact that Harris lost so substantially with less active voters compared to Joe Biden, not to mention how meager her returns were compared to President Trump, speaks to a greater issue for the Democratic Party. Instead of representing a set of priorities that could conceivably be sold as benefiting the majority of voters, the Democratic Party is focused on catering to a dwindling share of the population — highly engaged die-hard leftists.
The issue is that this is a group that is shrinking rapidly, and the radical policy priorities that were crafted to appeal to die-hard leftists are turning off virtually everyone else. According to Catalist, less than half of voters in the 2024 election were highly active.
The Democratic Party’s issues with less politically engaged voters are directly correlated to the party’s losses among lower-propensity groups like young voters, minorities, and non-college voters. Democrats’ coalition of highly active voters skew older, whiter, and more educated. According to Catalist’s numbers, a full 78 percent of highly active voters are white and just 23 percent are non-white. 81 percent of highly active voters are over age 45 while 19 percent are younger. On the flip side, minorities make up 37 percent of moderately active voters, and voters under age 45 make up two-thirds — 64 percent — of moderately active voters.
The Democratic Party’s inability to court lower propensity voters has been on the rise since 2016 when President Donald Trump began to successfully reinvolve Americans who had given up on the political system. Trump made great strides with less active voters in all three recent presidential elections, and he is drawing in less politically engaged, young, and minority voters to an America First set or priorities. Democrats appear to believe they can get by without less active voters — but the data tells a different story.
Manzanita Miller is the senior political analyst at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
Reproduced with permission. Original here: Democrats Face Steep Losses by Ignoring Less Politically Engaged Americans and Doing so Could Seal Their Fate
Help American Liberty PAC in our mission to elect conservatives and save our nation. Support – American Liberty PAC