by Jenifer Fernandez Ancona & Celinda Lake
In the wake of 2024’s disappointing results, Democrats are still confronting the hard truth: Millions of voters who supported Joe Biden for president in 2020 are no longer buying what they are selling.
It wasn’t just that those voters defected to Donald Trump. Millions of “Biden skippers” opted out of voting altogether.
Their glaring absence at the ballot box restacked the electorate with a distinctly pro-Republican tilt. However, a new Way to Win poll, conducted with Lake Research Partners, offers a rarity for Democrats in this political moment: Hope.
These voters are not necessarily lost. They’re waiting to be won back with a combination of verve and populist grit that eluded Democrats last cycle.
Voters who skipped the 2024 election aren’t who you’d expect
Many of the poll’s findings about these election skippers defy conventional wisdom. Contrary to popular belief, these voters still largely like Democrats (67%) and have a deep distaste for both Trump (60% unfavorable), and MAGA Republicans (63% unfavorable).
They also are politically engaged, with 75% saying they follow the news closely. What kept them home wasn’t apathy or ignorance, it was political disillusionment.
The problem was that they didn’t feel anyone was fighting for them. They want to affirmatively vote for someone and refused to show up for a choice between what they saw as the lesser of two evils. Democrats can still reach these voters, but the party will have to make a concerted effort to win them back and speak directly to their economic agenda.
This is especially true for Latino voters, who are emerging as the party’s most underappreciated swing demographic. While MAGA Republicans are deeply underwater with Latino skippers at -42 percentage points, Democrats are barely above water at a meager plus 3.
Latino voters are not automatic Democratic allies, and they will need to be persuaded that casting ballots is worth their time and effort.
Two specific themes emerged from the poll’s findings. First, these voters didn’t believe the Democratic ticket had a strong enough plan to address the housing affordability crisis. And second, they felt Democrats were focused too narrowly on middle-class tax cuts while ignoring deeper issues like poverty and inequality.
As an economically populist-minded group, they were enthused by Biden’s bold 2020 economic message of taxing the wealthy to invest in infrastructure and jobs. However, by 2024, that narrative had faded, and, as engaged voters, these skippers noticed.
This time, they didn’t hear a story about systemic change; instead, they heard a series of misaligned policy points that failed to connect. Put bluntly, voters felt that Democrats weren’t fighting for people like them or taking on big corporations who profit from price gouging and rich people who don’t pay what they owe in taxes. Even worse, they felt that was a broken promise that Democrats had failed to fulfill.
Bernie Sanders, AOC stand out to voters
From this bleak picture, a clear path forward is emerging. The data shows what motivates these voters isn’t culture war noise on transgender issues and “wokeness. ” It’s economic promise and freedom and having a chance at success.
Despite the media’s obsession with culture wars, Vice President Kamala Harris’ perceived wokeness and support for transgender rights ranked in the bottom tier of reasons people cited for skipping, while her not having a strong economic plan and being too hyper-focused on middle class issues were the top two performers.
Their top policy priorities focus on affordable health care, making the wealthy pay what they owe in taxes, stopping price gouging and making housing affordable. These kitchen-table issues are squarely in Democrats’ wheelhouse, but party leaders have to center them in a larger narrative about economic inequality and demonstrate the steely resolve to change things for the better.
Case in point: The politicians these voters like most are Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and they also side more with Democrats fighting back against Trump and his actions rather than working to find common ground. Sanders and AOC, more than many others in the party, stand out as leaders who aren’t afraid to challenge the system.
That’s the bold, unabashed tone Democrats must embrace to speak to people’s lived reality. Forget gross domestic product statistics and policy acronyms. Talk about “cracking down on tax cheats,” “putting a stop to price gouging” and “getting people the health care they need.”
Democrats must show they’re on the side of working people, and above all, they need to embody that persona.
Democrats must give people something to vote for, not against
The next two cycles in 2026 and 2028 may hinge on whether Democrats can bring these voters back into the fold. It won’t happen through fear of Trump or hollow slogans.
It will take offering them a compelling, hopeful and inclusive vision. Because for millions of Americans, the stakes aren’t abstract. They’re personal. People fight every day just to get by and they’re looking for a party that will fight alongside them.
Democrats have a golden opportunity right now to start winning over these voters by decrying MAGA Republicans’ cuts to Medicare and Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act’s rising premiums against the backdrop of another GOP tax giveaway to the top 1% and big corporations.
Democrats also face a potential pitfall: If they fail to persuade these voters, they could easily lose them to the couch again.
Regardless of the level of disdain most of these skippers hold for MAGA Republicans, they also do not innately believe that Democrats will make their lives better. As a result, these voters cannot be an afterthought.
They proved as much by staying home last November, and they’ll do it again if Democrats fail to heed the lessons of 2024.
Authors: Jenifer Fernandez Ancona is cofounder and Chief Strategy Officer of the Democratic donor collaborative and strategy hub, Way to Win. Celinda Lake is a veteran Democratic pollster and founder of Lake Research Partners.
