In the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election, some commentators argued that Americans no longer believe that Democrats share their political priorities. Our extensive research shortly after the election shows that these critics are aware of one thing. The overwhelming majority of Americans believe that the Democratic Party is more interested in advancing progressive social issues than broadly shared economic issues, but that turns out to be false.
More in Common, our nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization, asked a representative sample of 5,005 Americans to choose the three issues that matter most to them. They were then asked to identify “which issues you think are most important to the Democratic Party.” The same goes for the Republican Party. We used broad category labels, rather than asking specifically about “Democratic voters” or “Republican candidates,” for example, to capture general perceptions of each camp. We then compared these perceptions to reality.
Let’s start with reality. We found that Americans clearly share cost of living/inflation as their top concern for 2024. This was the most chosen priority within all major demographic groups, including men and women. Black, white, Latino, Asian American. Generation Z, Millennials, Generation X, Baby Boomers, and Silent Generation age groups. Working class, middle class, and upper class Americans. Suburban, urban, and rural Americans. and Democrats, Republicans, and independents. Democratic respondents’ top priorities after inflation (40%) were health care and abortion (29% each) and the economy in general (24%). For Republicans, immigration came in second (47%), followed by the economy in general (41%).
But we found significant differences in how Republicans and Democrats perceived their priorities. Across the political spectrum, Americans are far better at evaluating what Republicans value than what Democrats value.
When asked about the Republican Party’s priorities, all major groups, including Democrats and independents, correctly identified either inflation or the economy as among the top three Republican priorities.
By contrast, all demographic groups believed that abortion was the Democratic Party’s top priority, overestimating the issue’s importance by an average of 20 percentage points. (This includes the Democratic Party itself, suggesting that even its own members are somewhat out of sync with what they care about.) Meanwhile, respondents are more concerned about how much Democrats want to control inflation and the economy. They underestimate how much they are prioritizing, ranking these items 4th and 9th on their priority list. , respectively.
The most notable area in which the Democratic Party is misunderstood relates to what our research refers to as “LGBT/transgender policy.” Survey respondents listed it as Democrats’ second-highest priority, even though it was actually not a major priority for Democratic voters, ranking 14th. The effect was particularly dramatic among Republicans, with 56% ranking the issue among Democrats’ top three priorities, compared to just 8% who cited inflation. But almost every major population group made the same mistake.
Why are Democratic priorities so badly misunderstood while Republican priorities are not? Our research shows that one reason is the relationship between Democrats and the left. .
In 2018, More in Common conducted a study called “Hidden Tribes” to identify groups of like-minded Americans who share certain moral values and views on things like parenting styles. The study divided them into seven different “tribes,” each with a different worldview and approach to politics. It has also become clear that much of the national political conversation is being driven by small, vocal camps on both sides of the political divide. On the right is a group we called “committed conservatives.”
Because the voices of these groups are heard more often in national debates, their views tend to be confused with those of the party as a whole. (Consider, for example, the amount of social media posts, op-eds, and news coverage about the idea of defunding or abolishing the police in the summer of 2020. This idea was widely accepted even by those most affected.) police violence). ) This leads people to believe that each political party has more extreme views than they actually do. For example, Democrats think Republicans are more likely to deny that “racism remains a problem in America” than they actually are, and Republicans think Democrats are more likely to deny that “most police are bad people.” They think they are more likely to believe it than they actually are.
However, our data suggest that the priorities of committed conservatives are more aligned with the priorities of the average Republican than with the priorities of the average Democrat among progressive activists. Masu. For example, progressive activists are half as likely to prioritize the economy and twice as likely to prioritize climate change than the average Democrat. In contrast, the biggest difference between the average Republican and committed conservatives is immigration, but by a much smaller margin, with committed conservatives ranking first and Republicans ranking second. . This asymmetry means that disruptions between the party’s mainstream and more radical factions are more costly for Democratic politicians.
However, the heavy influence of progressive activists does not fully explain the discrepancy between perception and reality when it comes to Democratic positions on transgender policy. Our research found that even progressive activists ranked this issue as their sixth most important priority. So the belief that transgender policy is the Democratic Party’s second-highest priority must have another cause.
One possibility is that Democratic advocacy groups are promoting ideas that are lukewarm to even the country’s most progressive voters. Another is that Donald Trump’s campaign has successfully tied Kamala Harris’ campaign to controversial transgender policy positions. A widely seen attack ad features footage of a 2019 interview with Harris explaining her support for publicly funded sex-reassignment surgeries for prisoners, including illegal immigrants, with the words, “Kamala is for them. Kamala is for them. Kamala is for them. Kamala is for them. Kamala is for them.” President Trump is on your side. ” A test run by Harris’ flagship super PAC found that 2.7% of voters swung toward Trump after being shown the ad. Harris’s continued strengthening of her ties to this policy, combined with her apparent inability or unwillingness to publicly distance herself from it, has led to a decline in Americans’ engagement with trans issues. It is likely that ties with the Democratic Party have strengthened.
If elections are a battle of perceptions, our data suggests this is a battle that Democrats will lose in 2024. Even though the Harris campaign spent nearly $500 million more than the Trump campaign, the Trump campaign appears to have more effectively defined Democratic priorities for the election. American public. Caught between attacks from the far left and their opponents, Democrats have been unable to convince American voters that they share their concerns. This perception problem will need to be resolved if the party hopes to gain an advantage in future elections.
