Quote:

---

Quinnipiac poll has found that the Democrats’ favourability rating among the public sits at 31%, its lowest point since the firm began tracking that question back in 2008. Meanwhile, 57% hold an unfavourable view. This isn’t just due to a general dissatisfaction among voters — on the other side, Republicans essentially break even, with 43% of the public viewing them favourably (a historic high in this poll) versus 45% unfavourably.

It’s not just Quinnipiac, either. A CNN survey from this month showed that nearly one-third (32%) of Democratic-leaning adults said the political events of the past few years made them feel like they’ve been pushed away from the party, compared to 23% who said they feel closer to it. For the Democrats to dig themselves out of this hole, they will need to honestly address how they got there.

Party leaders must first reckon how, over the past two decades, they came to believe in the idea of an “emerging Democratic majority”: a coalition of racial minorities, women, young people, and the professional class that would deliver them sustained electoral success as many of these groups grew in size. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer once even uttered: “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.”

Yet this was ill-fated in multiple ways. Working-class non-college-educated voters make up 58% of the electorate, giving them substantial influence. The “emerging majority” thesis, rooted in an identitarian understanding of the country, also viewed many of these groups as essentially monolithic, and the party apparently convinced itself that each section of support was unconditional. But as the Trump era has shown, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, some of the party’s largest losses between 2020 and 2024 came from these exact groups.

---