In the 2024 presidential election, Democrats and Vice President Kamala Harris persuaded ardent supporters and regular voters to support them.
Their issue: They were defeated by almost everyone else.
Seventy-six percent of registered voters said they keep a close eye on politics and public affairs, according to the final NBC News survey of the 2024 election. According to the poll, Harris was 5 points ahead of Donald Trump in the category (52%–47%).
But among the remaining quarter of voters who said they don t follow politics closely, Trump was ahead by a much greater margin 14 points, 54%-40%.
According to the NBC News Exit Poll, Democrats struggled in the election results earlier this month, particularly when compared to previous presidential contests. These less engaged voters were disproportionately younger, more Republican-leaning, and less likely to have college degrees.
Democratic strategists warn NBC News that the party needs to improve its communication with these disengaged voters and avoid being enmeshed in a bubble following their 2024 loss.
“The Democratic Party has a lot of work to do on how we’re reaching voters,” stated Democratic strategist Christina Freundlich, citing this cycle as one of the key lessons learned. The game of persuasion was lost by us.
Steve Schale, a veteran Florida-based Democratic strategist who worked on Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns and for a pro-Joe Biden super PAC in the 2020 campaign, takes the criticism of his party even further.
“We don t have authentic messengers,” he said. “We avoid the communication channels where many of these voters get their information.
“And, fair or unfair, our brand among many of these voters is defined by the most extreme voices in our party,” Schale continued,echoing a point recently made by Sen. John Fettermanof Pennsylvania and others.
‘We simply stopped communicating to many voters’
Democrats overperforming with highly engaged voters but struggling with less-engaged voters reflects America s political realignment over the past decade, as Democrats have made gains among college-educated and more frequent voters, while Republicans have won over more working-class andless-frequent voters.
It’s a dynamic that helps explain Democratic success in recent special elections and the 2022 midterms as well as why Trump and the GOP did better in the higher-turnout 2024 presidential election.
Media consumption also underscores the political split between highly engaged voters and less-engaged ones. In anNBC News poll in Aprilwhen President Joe Biden was still in the race Democrats overperformed among voters who get their political news from newspapers and national TV networks.
But they struggled among voters who got their news from places like YouTube and Google.
And that April poll showed Biden trailing Trump by nearly 30 points among voters who said they don t follow political news.
The most recent NBC News poll, from November,asked a different question: Do you listen to podcasts to get news and information?
Almost half of voters 42% said yes, and Trump led Harris by double digits among these podcast listeners, 57%-42%.
Schale, the Democratic strategist from Florida, argues that Democrats simply stopped communicating with huge swaths of voters.
“Data analytics tries to tell us things like where it is efficient or not to spend time or money, and we score voters with numbers to help maximize efficiency,” he said. “The problem is we simply stopped communicating to many voters because they didn t fit the model of how we got to a win.”
“Guess what?” Schale continued. “It s led us to play in fewer states and talk to fewer voters. So for lower-information voters, they are relying on their own life and their perception of the brands of the parties.”
Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson, a veteran of state and national campaigns, says it would be a mistake for his party to try to win over less-engaged voters with more information.
The wrong solution for Democrats is to think that low-information voters could be persuaded by clogging them with more information, he said. The right solution is to be clear and focused on what we re communicating.
Democrats have gotten into a habit with messages and language that makes it harder for people to follow, Ferguson added. You can have a Ph.D., but you don t need to communicate it in a way where only Ph.D.s can understand what you re saying.
‘You don t need to pick up a paper for that’: Voters felt nation was on wrong track
But Republican strategist Doug Heye believes discussing the split between highly engaged voters and less-engaged voters misses the mark.
In the 2024 election, enough voters believed prices are too high and that the country is on the wrong track to compel change, he explained.
They don t need the media to tell them prices are too high, Heye said. Live a normal American life and you ll probably think we re on the wrong track. You don t need to pick up a paper for that.
Whatever weird rabbit holes Trump would go down at events which those voters weren t paying attention to anyway the overarching theme of his campaign was we are on the wrong track, he added. Harris seemed to either not want to talk about that or struggled with how to.
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