Was the 2024 election a political freak of nature—the result of an aging president unwilling to acknowledge his disability until it was too late? Was it merely an instance of the anti-incumbency trend seen in many countries in the wake of post-pandemic inflation? Or did the dismal losses for the Democrats betoken future difficulties for the party?
There is no doubt that Harris was tarred by Biden’s unpopularity and by rising grocery prices, but the Democratic losses went below the presidential level and include Senate and House races they were supposed to win handily. The election revealed some new weaknesses for Democrats—for instance, among younger voters—but it rested on larger demographic and geographical trends that have haunted the Democrats for decades.
The 2024 results were consistent with Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016. The Democrats’ victory in 2020 was the result of exceptional circumstances—Donald Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic, the Democratic establishment’s boost of the least unelectable candidate, Joe Biden, and the pandemic shielding that candidate from the rigors of a normal campaign. Without a dramatic change in how voters perceive the Democrats, the trends that were evident in the 2016 and 2024 elections are likely to persist and could provide the Republicans an advantage over the next decade or so.
In what follows, I’ll explain what these trends are and how they have affected Democrats’ chances in presidential and senate elections. If I had to single out a difference between my views and those of other commentators, it would be on the importance of political geography. Finally, I’ll say something about what the Democrats need to improve their standing. Here, I think the main difference I would have with many Democrats is on the question of whether a renewed focus on economics will be enough to revive the party.
The Working Class Vote. Democrats began to lose support within the working class (defined roughly in polling terms as voters without a college degree) as far back as the 1960s, but they reached a new low in 2016 when Hillary Clinton lost this demographic by three points—and the white working class by 27 points. (In citing poll numbers, I give precedence to Catalist post-election compilations when comparing 2016 and 2020, AP/VoteCast on 2024 numbers, and the Edison Exit polls on any trends that go back before 2016. Where there is a wide disparity, I will try to explain the difference.) Biden gained back some of these votes in 2020, but Kamala Harris lost them by 13 points and the white working class by 31 points. Harris lost 16 percentage points among Latinos without a college degree and three points among blacks without a degree.
“Harris lost 16 percentage points among Latinos without a college degree.”
Rural and Small Town Voters. The Democratic share of the rural and small-town vote began falling in 1980, but the big decline, as political scientists Nicholas Jacobs and Daniel Shea demonstrate in The Rural Voter, began with the 2010 midterm election, when the Republicans flipped 31 House seats in rural districts and 20 in districts that mixed rural and urban. Democrats reached a new low of 34 percent among rural voters in 2016. Biden rebounded slightly, but Harris dropped back to Clinton’s level of support.
Harris received 34 and 35 percent support respectively in the Edison and AP/VoteCast polls, but the Edison poll estimates the rural vote as 19 percent, which roughly corresponds to the narrow Census estimate, while the AP/VoteCast figures, which ask voters whether they live in rural areas or small towns, estimates the rural/small-town vote as 35 percent. (As shown in the two graphs below, the two kinds of estimate follow the same trajectory.) The latter figure is more indicative of the difficulties that Democrats face.
1. Democratic Presidential Vote by Location, 1976-2024 using strict census categories (compiled by Nicholas Jacobs)
2. Democratic Presidential Vote 1976-2024 using broader criteria of rural and small town (compiled by Nicholas Jacobs)
The Male Vote. Beginning in 1980, Democratic presidential candidates began enjoying more success among female than male voters. That is what the term “gender gap” referred to. In the 1992, 1996, 2008, 2012, and 2020 presidential elections, Democratic victories were attributable to this gender gap. But when Republicans won elections, they enjoyed rising success among male voters that overcame the Democratic gender gap. In 2016, Clinton’s margin among women allowed her to win the popular vote, but she did worse among men than Barack Obama had. In 2024, male voters went over to Trump by 13 points, easily overcoming Harris’s six-point margin among women. Key male constituencies included black males, among whom Trump gained 12 points from 2020, Latinos, among whom he gained 19 points, and young (18–29-year-old) men, among whom he gained 14 points.
Because American presidential elections are decided by state totals in the Electoral College and senators are elected by states, the statewide configuration of votes is critical for control of the White House and the Senate. If you factor in the Democrats’ growing difficulties among rural and small-town voters and among voters without college degrees, you come out with an electoral map that gives an edge to Republicans despite Democratic success in large post-industrial metro centers and among the college-educated. Again, it is a matter of seeing 2024 as a continuation of 2016 rather than of 2020.
“The red wall is now larger than the blue wall.”
In 2016, Clinton lost six states that Obama had won twice: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Ohio, and Florida. The first three of these states were part of a “blue wall” that Democrats had won in every presidential election since 1992. Biden put these three states back in the Democratic column in 2020, but Harris lost them and the other three in 2024. And she lost Iowa, Ohio, and Florida in margins that suggested these states have now become part of a Republican “red wall.” Harris’s defeat in these states can’t simply be attributed to her being a weak candidate. Popular three-term incumbent Democratic Senators lost in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and two-term incumbent Tammy Baldwin barely squeaked by in Wisconsin.
If you look at the states that Democrats lost in 2016 and 2024, and if you include states like Missouri and Montana that were once swing states, you come up with two features that could show a trend to the Republicans. These states have a higher than the national average percentage of rural and small-town voters, and of voters without a college degree.
You would also find above-average percentages of rural and small-town voters and of voters without college degrees in solidly Republican states like Mississippi, Kentucky, West Virginia, Wyoming, and North Dakota. The exceptions are the upper New England states that were once dominated by liberal or moderate Republicans and became amenable to Democrats decades ago when the Republican party was captured by conservatives.
If you put the states that shifted to the Republicans in 2016 together with the more traditionally Republican states, you have the makings of a Republican advantage in presidential elections and a persistent Republican majority in the Senate. If you look at the electoral map for 2028, and measure those states that are safe or likely—the requirement for “likely” being that the party in question won them in 2024 by more than five percentage points—you come up with 218 safe or likely Republican electoral votes and 192 Democratic ones. The red wall is now larger than the blue wall.
In our 2023 book Where Have All the Democrats Gone? Ruy Teixeira and I described some of the underlying causes that led working-class voters, who were once the heart of the Democratic majority, to abandon the party. The reasons why Democrats have lost rural and small-town voters is explained in Jacobs and Shea’s The Rural Voter. The decline in working-class Democrats largely coincides with the party’s decline in rural and small-town America. (In many large post-industrial metro centers, Democrats get a good share of the working class, non-college educated vote—a point made by analyst Michael Podhorzer.)
First came the backlash, particularly among white southerners and northern white ethnics, to the civil-rights revolution, the Great Society, and the expansion of welfare, and by evangelical Protestants to the New Left counter-culture. That backlash culminated in Ronald Reagan’s landslide win in 1980 and the Republican conquest of Congress in 1994. It was then coupled with, and to some extent superseded by, the reaction among working-class voters to the Democrats’ espousal of free trade and porous borders, racial justice, affirmative action, and an alphabet soup of gender identification, and by Democrats’ opposition to fossil-fuel production and pipelines. This occurred over decades and culminated in Trump’s victory in 2016.
Over five decades, the party’s leadership and its base have been transformed. That, in turn, has transformed what the party stands for and, more important, is seen to stand for. The Democrats were once the party of business interests in finance, urban real estate, oil and gas, and entertainment, on one hand, and of labor, the big-city machines, and the solid South, on the other. With the decline of labor and the urban machines and the loss of the solid South and rising progressive opposition to fossil fuels, the party came to rely on sympathetic business interests on Wall Street, in real estate, and in Hollywood and Silicon Valley on the one hand, and on foundations, think tanks, lobbies, and media, many of which dated from the 1960s and stood for women’s and minority rights, gay rights, consumer and environmental protection, human rights, and gun control. Labor remained influential, but as one interest group among many.
There were differences in the party leadership over economic issues, but during the Democratic presidencies, business often prevailed over labor on trade, finance, and even taxes. Where the different factions often came together was over social issues, including affirmative action, immigration (which is also an economic issue), racial justice, women’s and gay rights, and environmental (but not financial) regulation. The Democrats became the party of NAFTA, of the repeal of Glass-Steagall, of support for abortion, equal pay, and gay rights; of acquiescence to illegal immigration; the party of the Kyoto and Paris climate agreements, and of diversity, equity and inclusion. In the 2010s, the party increasingly became identified with radical stances on sex and gender, as well as with a lax attitude toward asylum that was exploited by networks of smugglers, a rejection of equality in favor of “equity,” and hostility to law enforcement.
Within the party’s activist circles, a key role was increasingly played by college-educated women who were the heirs of the feminist movement, and by college-educated blacks who were the heirs of the civil-rights revolution. Of the party’s last five presidential nominees, everyone except for Biden fit this bill: a black male lawyer from Chicago, a white female lawyer from Washington DC, and a mixed-race female lawyer from San Francisco. Until recently, the House speaker was a woman from San Francisco; the current minority leader is a black man from New York City.
As its leadership and direction changed, so did the party’s electorate. Once the party of the working class, it became the party of college-educated professionals and minorities who lived, for the most part, in the large post-industrial metro centers. That reinforced the changes within the leadership. These shifts in the party’s leadership and base reinforced the party’s focus on social and environmental issues that took a more radical form in the last decade.
Political analysts often frame the choice of candidate and party in terms of specific issues. And there have been certain issues that have proved so salient that they have shifted working-class and rural and small-town voters away from the Democrats. One of these, which is often mischaracterized in polling, is the Democratic opposition to fossil fuels. That has threatened Democrats in states like Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Wyoming, and Montana that depend on fossil fuels for jobs and state revenue. But it has also hurt Democrats in farm states that depend on oil-based fertilizer. Coal-producing West Virginia began moving away from the Democrats in 2000, when Al Gore, the chief proponent of Kyoto, was the Democratic nominee. It is now part of the red wall. Oil- and coal-rich North Dakota had two Democratic Senators from 1987 to 2011. Now the state is solidly Republican. Louisiana and Montana were once swing states, and Pennsylvania was part of the blue wall.
But in general, individual issues are important in contributing to a general impression of what the party stands for and which voters it really represents. In both the 2016 and 2024 elections, the party’s radical turn on socio-cultural issues reinforced an image of elite metropolitan insularity. In the 2024 election, Democrats’ opposition to strict border security and support for a transgender-rights agenda that went far beyond protection from discrimination, including the participation of biological males in women’s sports, proved to be part of the party’s undoing. Trump’s most effective ad in wooing swing voters cited Harris’s support for state funding of sex-change operations for detained illegal immigrants. The most important single issue in the election cycle was the Biden administration’s lax stand on illegal immigration.
In a poll of voters in factory towns in swing states, Lake Research found that the single greatest “negative perception” of the Democrats was that they “were obsessed with LGBT transgender issues instead of focusing on kitchen table economic issues.” In a post-election poll of swing voters conducted by YouGov, Greenberg Research found that the top reason voters opposed Harris was they believed she was for “open borders.” That was followed by prices being too high and by Harris and the Democrats’ assumed support for transgender athletes and for “ultra-left and woke Democrats.”
The New York Times asked voters after the election what they thought were the most important issues and what they thought the top issues were for the Democratic and Republican parties. The poll found that voters viewed abortion, LGBT policy, and climate change as the Democrats’ top issues, revealing the degree to which the party is seen to be preoccupied with social and environmental issues that are anathema to many working-class and rural and small-town voters.
Many of these voters may agree with Democrats on certain issues. Lake Research found, for instance, that rural voters share Democrats’ positions on drug prices, greater access to affordable healthcare, and tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations. But many of these voters reject the party itself and recoil at the very idea of voting for a Democrat. What counts is the overall image. Jacobs and Shea contend that rural voters hold a “heightened grievance toward government and urban areas,” which they associate with the Democratic Party. They view Democrats as disdainful of or indifferent toward rural communities, and believe that because of Democrats, they are “being held back and sacrificed for the betterment of others.” “Grievance,” Jacobs and Shea write, “explains why rural voters are so hostile to the Democratic party.”
Democrats’ woes among male voters, which rose clearly to the surface in the 2024 election, stem from the changes in the party’s leadership and base that have shaped its priorities. In the wake of Bill Clinton’s campaign declaring 1992 “the year of the woman,” Republican analyst Jude Wanniski dubbed the Democrats the “mommy party.” Since then, college-educated women have become a key part of the party’s leadership and its voting base. That culminated in Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, in which she asked voters to support her because she would become the first woman president. Likewise, as a presidential candidate in 2024, Harris was at her most passionate promoting abortion rights and least convincing talking about economics.
“The GOP was able to exploit Democrats’ indifference or hostility toward young men.”
As Democrats have campaigned vigorously for women’s rights, many male voters have felt scorned or ignored. As Richard Reeves, the author of Of Boys and Men, has noted, the counterpart to the Democrats’ focus on feminist concerns was the party’s seeming indifference to the plight of young males, who suffer from a high suicide rate and an absence of opportunity. Indeed, activist groups and writers associated with the Democrats were also quick to associate men with “toxic masculinity” and to blame Trump’s success on misogyny.
In 2024, the GOP was able to exploit Democrats’ indifference or hostility toward young men and growing male resentment against women’s advancement. Many men, and particularly younger men, see the progress of women in education and employment as coming at their expense. According to a Brookings study, 45 percent of the men aged 18 to 29 say they face discrimination as men. According to a Pew poll, 38 percent of men who identify as Republican say “women’s gains have come at the expense of men.” As the “mommy party,” the Democrats were sure to invite the wrath of many male voters. Many of these voters were also working-class and many lived in rural areas and small towns, but Harris also lost young men with college degrees—a group that was formerly in the Democratic corner.
To say that the trends described here give the Republicans an edge nationally is not to say that Republicans have acquired a stable, long-term majority. The overall numbers remain close, and presidential elections are likely to be settled by swing states that could go either way. Democrats can win if voters’ fear and dislike of a Republican president or of extreme Republican policies overshadows their misgivings about Democrats. That happened in 2020 and in the 2018 and 2022 congressional elections, and could happen in 2026 and 2028, especially if Trump continues to exceed his popular mandate. Trump’s collaboration with the anti-government libertarian Elon Musk, whose priorities do not mesh with those of many Americans, may prove a liability.
“Democrats must alter their image in voters’ minds.”
A Republican president and Congress can also be tarred by a major scandal like Watergate, a military setback like that in Iraq, or a concurrent recession like that in 1991 and 1992. But in the absence of these conditions, and with both parties running politically skilled candidates and campaigns, the Republicans have an edge in presidential elections and in holding the Senate.
To reverse their fortunes, the Democrats must alter their image in voters’ minds. Above all, they must be seen again as the party of the “normal American” and “the real America.” The last time they succeeded in doing a makeover like this was in the 1992 election when a group of politicians and political operatives, working through a group called the Democratic Leadership Council, turned around voters’ perception of the Democrats as weak on crime and defense and opposed to any reform of the welfare system. The DLC’s former president Bill Clinton won in 1992 on the DLC’s platform. I don’t suggest that the Democrats need to mimic the content of the DLC platform, particularly on economic and trade issues, but they do need to transform their image, or what political consultants call their “brand.”
Some commentators have insisted the Democrats’ defeat had nothing to do with “wokeness.” That is a fatal misreading. The Democratic makeover must start with the panoply of cultural and socio-economic stands that Republicans were able to use in 2024 to discredit Democratic candidates. These include the Democrats’ positions on immigration, sex and gender, affirmative action, criminal justice, and climate change. A candidate like Sherrod Brown in Ohio had said all the right things about economics and labor for decades, but he was defeated by a candidate who linked him to the Democrats’ stances on social issues.
I’m not suggesting Democrats should hypocritically adopt positions that are wrong-headed. In rejecting the participation of biological males in competitive women’s sports, as California Gov. Gavin Newsom did recently, Democrats would have biology and public opinion on their side. The same goes for policies that have encouraged street crime and illegal immigration. A more difficult issue is climate change. Democrats are right to reject Republican claims that it is a hoax or needs no serious attention—indeed, the Trump administration is actively discouraging the transition to renewable energy. But in order to win public support for any climate measures, Democrats will have to tone down their apocalyptic rhetoric and abandon unrealistic goals for achieving net-zero emissions. That would include, for instance, supporting natural gas as a transitional fuel and nuclear energy as a feasible alternative to fossil fuels.
When it comes to rural and small-town voters, Jacobs and Shea advise Democrats to “show up.” “Voters need to be convinced,” they write, “that a candidate shares their concerns.” They cite the fact that Barack Obama ignored rural America while he was president. In his first year in office, prior to the disastrous 2010 midterm election, he made 43 trips inside the United States, but only one to a rural county. The same approach goes for winning back the young male voters who deserted the Democrats in 2024. Some Democrats seem to have gotten this message. In February, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore urged in his State of the State speech “a greater statewide focus on supporting and elevating our men and boys.”
Finally, the Democrats must nominate candidates who can appeal to voters beyond the party’s base. They nominated candidates in 2016 and 2024 who came directly out of the party’s aspiring leadership groups and who voiced, above all, concerns peculiar to those groups. Note they do not have to nominate a white male former UFC champ of Scots-Irish descent to reach outside their base. Barbara Mikulski, who represented my state, Maryland, in the Senate for two decades, was perfectly comfortable talking to blue-collar audiences. Tammy Baldwin, a Madison lesbian, has been able to connect well with pro-Trump rural and small-town Wisconsin voters, and outperformed Harris in 2024 (although being tarnished with the party’s national brand reduced her margin from previous cycles).
Change can come from the politicians themselves or from the party’s leadership groups and be ratified, in effect, by its primary voters. And there is likely to be an opening for Democrats as Trump courts the wealthy with tax breaks and with the removal of regulations that protect workers’ safety and people’s health, as Musk and congressional Republicans wage war on social programs, including Medicaid and Social Security, that benefit working-class voters, and as Trump embraces his own cultural extremists. But so far, the signs of a Democratic response are not that encouraging. Instead, Democrats continue to cling to policies that put them in jeopardy.
In the House of Representatives, only 46 out of 211 Democrats backed a bill that would have deported illegal immigrants convicted of violence against women. The relevant Democratic-allied organizations, led by the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Immigration Law Center, vigorously opposed it. Newsom’s stand on transgender men in women’s sports drew a sharp rebuke from the Human Rights Campaign, the major LBGTQ organization in Washington. For taking the same stand, Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts received a scolding from his hometown mayor and the state party.
It may take another defeat or two in national elections to convince leading Democratic politicians that they have to listen to the public rather than to their activist lobbies or their billionaire donors. For me, that represents a looming disaster. For all their faults, the Democrats remain the party of constitutional adherence and of a government dedicated to overcoming the failures to which a society is prey if it lets the market run free. But if the Democrats remain on their current path, it may be too late to revive institutions such as the Environmental Protection Agency, which the Trump administration appears determined to dismantle, or to undo the damage done to the country’s public health system. And that may be minimizing the damage that the current administration and the movement it has spawned could inflict on the country.