Republican strategists are concerned about Trump’s low approval ratings and voter anxiety about the economy. One person familiar with the Oval Office strategy meeting put it this way: “When the issues that you typically campaign on don’t move voters—or voters are pissed off at you about those issues—the question becomes: What do you campaign on?” Some GOP strategists favor focusing entirely on specific races in an effort to convince voters of the merits of individual candidates and local issues.

But Trump himself has rejected that approach. House and Senate Democrats, the president noted during the meeting, will make their fall campaigns a referendum on him. His advisers told him that the poor polling reflects the fact that the voting public still does not know about many of his accomplishments.

Finally, something Donald Trump and Joe Biden have in common besides being in their 80s - advisors whining on background about how “if only the public understood how great the things they are doing are,” they would win easily. It’s sad that presidents have no agency in communicating with the public, leaving voters only with their personal experiences when judging the state of America.

The solution Trump settled on, according to three people familiar with the meeting, was to lean into the Democratic strategy of focusing on himself. The president ordered a series of television advertisements about his own record that will serve as a backdrop to the hundreds of individual House and Senate contests. Trump wanted what one person described to us as “environmental lift” ads—commercials that would focus on nationalizing the midterms broadly around his victories—and he suggested that the ad makers mine his own on-camera statements as building blocks.

I talked to two voters yesterday about a variety of topics. Both are conservative leaning, inclined to vote Republican down ballot, but really don’t like Trump or the way he is running the country. They both said Trump will play no role in how they will vote this year. It will be really helpful to me and the candidates I am working with for Trump to make himself front and center the rest of the way in every race. What could go wrong? Just this Tuesday, in Republican runoffs he personally invested $$ and emotional energy into, his preferred candidate for South Carolina U.S. Senate, Darline Graham, won by 8,069 votes, and his choice for Oklahoma Governor won by 2,047 votes. With those types of landslide elections in Republican runoffs, just imagine what the Trump endorsement will do in November.

Not to be a media critic,1 but I don’t think it has sunk in how poor a position the President is in. Some have critiqued the University of Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiment as not measuring the same things today as it has in the past. Regardless, consumer sentiment is the lowest it has been in the almost 50 years they have been measuring it.

The dashed line is the current reading. While higher than the all-time low of 44.8 in May of this year, it is lower than it was through every presidency going back to Jimmy Carter and significantly lower than any president faced going into a midterm.

Consumer confidence was significantly higher during Trump’s first term than it has been during his second term. Both times he has been President, he has complained about “inheriting a mess,” but he didn’t the first time and really didn’t his second time as confidence recovered from COVID2 . Confidence did not increase either time during his first two years in office.

Donald Trump is simply not a good President. More and more people are saying that. By all means, go ahead with the Trumptown midterm convention in Dallas. Hopefully every network will air it in its entirety. For the delegates attending, I would stay away from the kool aid though. BYOB instead.

In Wyoming, State Senator Eric Barlow beat Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder for the GOP nomination for Governor. Degenfelder got the Trump endorsement and lost by 15 percentage points.1 This struck me in the Politico write up:

Barlow, a fourth generation Wyomingite rancher, centered his campaign on protecting public lands, funding public schools and expanding rural health care access. Degenfelder leaned heavily on her Trump endorsement, and her campaign as well as outside groups supporting her ran repeated attack ads casting Barlow as too liberal to lead the state.

Imagine that. Voters caring more about things that matter to their lives instead of the national passion play about Donald Trump and scary liberalism. It’s almost as if democracy is about the allocation of scarce public resources and not a demented holy war. Given that Democrats pose a 0.000% threat in Wyoming, the usual campaign nonsense has less relevance.

In Florida, State Senator Angie Nixon beat presumed frontrunner Alexander Vindman by 12 points for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate despite being vastly outraised ($974,844 to $16.3 million as of July 29th). Axios had this observation:

Vindman’s defeat adds to a rough primary year for Democrats whose national brands were built around Trump’s impeachment fights.

Former impeachment counsel Dan Goldman, impeachment manager Diana DeGette, along with Al Green and Shri Thanedar, both of whom have introduced impeachment articles during Trump’s second term, all lost Democratic primaries this year.

Like in Wyoming, a campaign brand built around Donald Trump, regardless of party, is a clear liability in 2026.

Turning to Ohio, the National Republican Senate Committee is clearly getting spooked by the lead former Senator Sherrod Brown is posting over appointed Senator Jon Husted as well as Brown’s ads tying Husted to unchecked data center development:

The group put out this memo today urging the AI companies to start effectively communicating on data center development or the entire house of cards the industry has built with the Trump Administration and Republican Party will come tumbling down:

What is amazing about this memo is the potential for new issues to scramble the calcified nature of our politics. Data centers and AI are unpopular in ways that defy partisanship. The memo shows that DC doesn’t really know what to do about it right now as the NRSC can’t campaign for Husted and data centers at the same time.

Finally, for the second week in a row, the vaunted “prediction” markets produced charts that perfectly illustrate how they provide no more insight into elections than throwing a dart at a wall.

Wisconsin Governor

Florida U.S. Senate

So much for “wisdom of the crowds.”2

All of this is to say that, as always, when it comes to an election less than three months out, no one knows anything. Work hard, embrace the uncertainty, and assume that voters are smarter than the pundits, lobbyists, and operatives give them credit for.

Bitcoin has had a rough go of it recently. The value against the dollar has dropped by almost half over the last eight months.

If I were the President of a country whose currency lost half its value against the dollar in eight months, I would suffer a fate similar to Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada in Bolivia in 2003 and have to be helicoptered out of the country to a luxury resort elsewhere.3

This rapid loss in value is not confined to just Bitcoin. Most of these “currencies” have suffered heavy losses over the last year despite the heavily lobbied for “Genius Act” passing in July 2025.

This list doesn’t even include failed “currencies” that are only immortalized through long-term ad campaigns in places like Nationals Park that outlived the coin.

What makes this whole industry even more absurd is how tightly correlated the changes in these values are with each other.

This all matters right now because there is currently a panic going on in Congress about the inability to pass legislation before the summer recess to codify the gains the industry made through its successful bets on the 2024 election. You would think that an industry enduring these losses would have other more pressing concerns, but no.

The traders at Polymarket are starting to get bearish on the passage of the Clarity Act,4 going from 82 cents yes in February to 38 cents today, similar to the downward trajectory of Bitcoin.

In the midst of a historic affordability crisis, a new forever war in Iran, skyrocketing budget deficits, closing of rural hospitals, and 1,500,000+ children losing food aid in the last year, Congress has spent untold hours on cryptocurrency legislation.

We can’t easily quantify the hours members and staff spend on an issue, but we can add up the money spent by the industry.5 Already this election cycle, the Crypto industry has spent $189 million on the 2026 midterms. This is on top of the army of lobbyists working on “the Genius Act” and “the Clarity Act,” the $100 million+ poured into the 2024 elections, and the Sam Bankman-Fried money laid out in the 2022 elections before he went to jail.

It is not fair to say this industry has bought off members of Congress,6 and that is why they are prioritizing legislation that will not bring down the costs of anything. Many members live in fear of this money being deployed against them in the next election, and rightly so. It shouldn’t be this way. An industry that is suffering the losses Crypto is, and acting desperate to pass legislation, is a dead giveaway that the real power in this relationship is with the Congress. In an ideal world, Crypto would be in as much fear of Congress as its members are of Crypto $$$.

I closed my last post saying “getting money out of politics is not a slogan. It is essential to returning to the type of healthy democracy we have strayed so far from.” $$$ = power in Washington DC until Congress pro-actively changes that equation. They should, if for no other reason than preserving their own dignity.

The arc of Susan Collins’s political career is a perfect illustration of the corroding impact of money in U.S. Senate elections. The Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. FEC decision in 2010, as well as the existential stakes each close Senate race provides, has led to an explosion in money. Here is a chart of the amount of money Susan Collins and her Democratic opponent have raised since she first got elected in 1996:

It seems quaint to remember a day when candidates for an open Senate seat raised and spent less than $3 million. Democrats never seriously challenged Collins in her first three re-election campaigns until 2020, either directly or through outside spending by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), Senate Majority PAC (SMP), and others.

The spending on this race in 2020 has completely warped the perceptions of the contest this year. Democrats spent over $135 million supporting Sara Gideon, the 2020 nominee. Gideon raised $11 million more than she spent. There are only 10 commercial broadcast television stations in Maine serving just 923,735 active registered voters. If you think of democracy as each person having an equal say in the allocation of public resources, very few, if any, of the thousands of ads aired on television and sent digitally helped illuminate the choice. And Gideon and the IEs left no lasting infrastructure to build democratic change.

There are two ways to succeed in an election for U.S. Senate - 1) you gain the endorsements of the people in the party who control access to money or 2) you crack the code on online fundraising. The Platner campaign executed the second approach flawlessly, with an introductory ad designed to hit every pleasure center in a certain type of Democrat.

Platner presents as a worker who does the back-breaking labor of working one of the main sources of tourism in the state. He is a Maine native2 and angry about the condition of the country, a Democratic Party that lost twice to Trump, Susan Collins and her whole “moderate” act, the lack of opportunity for working people, and what is happening in Gaza. He also displays an image - oysterman and outsider - completely contrary to that of the people Collins beat in the past.3

Unlike in 2018-2020, just being an angry Democrat is not enough to unlock money online. Platner and his team knew this and crafted his introduction to maximize his potential to raise money, and it worked. He raised over $16 million. That’s more than all of Collins’s Democratic opponents before Gideon combined. Governor Janet Mills dropped out because she couldn’t raise money online, and the reinforcements of national donor money never arrived because she couldn’t show a path to victory. This is all essential as Collins has raised nearly $15 million and groups supporting her have spent over $13 million.

It’s impossible to overlook how Platner’s ability to raise money kept him in the race despite the numerous scandals leading up to his final one. The gatekeepers in Washington DC played a role too in keeping candidates out of the race in favor of Janet Mills, who was perceived, rightly or wrongly at the time, as the candidate donors would be most comfortable backing. The Mills-Platner contest happened because there are only two viable models for financing a campaign for U.S. Senate. The election for Maine Governor underscores this. The race featured four experienced Democrats who raised a fraction of what Platner and Collins took in, but the only one who won statewide, Shenna Bellows, got clobbered by Collins in 2014.4

In a normal world, one that did not require raising and spending over $100 million to win a Senate seat in a tiny state, one or more of those gubernatorial candidates could have been competitive. We don’t live in that world. Big money, whether it is from the “establishment” universe or the “outsider” universe, narrows our choices, raises the stakes beyond anything “normal,” and runs the risk of disaster, which we are seeing played out.

Getting money out of politics is not a slogan. It is essential to returning to the type of healthy democracy we have strayed so far from.

While an oft-repeated cliché,1 this also happens to be true. Pollsters, especially those who work for campaigns, write surveys that exist in the moment. Just last week, I fielded surveys for a primary election for executive in a large Midwestern county and two polls for state House of Representatives in two western states. One of these polls was for a potential race next year. These surveys focus on immediate issues and the current political environment, and try to persuade people to vote a certain way in an election that will happen in four months, or sooner. This precludes taking a longer look back on how public opinion has shifted over the last few decades. Fortunately, that is what the Pew Research Center is for.

Every 5-6 years, this vital institution puts out their “Beyond Red vs. Blue: The Political Typology” report. This report goes deep into segmenting the electorate and looking at what is driving our politics as well as what issues and themes motivate the various coalitions within each party. This provides the type of big picture overview that campaigns for Congress and other offices just don’t have the luxury for. You can find these reports here: 2026, 2021, 2017, 2014, 2011, 2005, and 1999. There are earlier typologies, but I want to start close to the turn of the millenium. I am formulating a longer deep dive into how rotten the first quarter of this century has been to develop a strategy to reverse the excess of it.

Given how long and in-depth these reports are, I want to focus here just on a couple of elements. When looking at what drives political attitudes, it becomes clear just how much Republicans and Republican media drive our political dialogue:

• In 1999, the underlying dimensions were attitudes about government's efficiency and generosity, business power, religiosity, financial contentment, and social tolerance. These were the core components of George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign.

• In 1999, foreign policy barely differentiated the parties. By 2005, after 9/11, the Iraq War, and the 2004 Bush re-election campaign centered on terrorism response, national security assertiveness drove partisanship. This was best illustrated in a GOP PowerPoint that was “dropped” in Lafayette Square Park in 2002 with the advice to “Focus on War and Economy.”

  

• After the financial crash of 2008, the failure of the Iraq War, and the election of Barack Obama, what drove partisanship shifted to the size and role of government in both the studies conducted during the Obama Administration. The focus on the size of government did not prevent Obama from being re-elected, but it did lead to a freeze in federal spending on everything but Defense and mandatory programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid from the immediate aftermath of the crash until the beginning of the COVID pandemic.

This spending decline/freeze that started in Obama’s first term was consistent with his rhetoric at the time: “But families across the country are tightening their belts and making tough decisions. The federal government should do the same. So tonight, I'm proposing specific steps to pay for the $1 trillion that it took to rescue the economy last year.”2 Republican rhetoric drove policy outcomes even with them shut out of the White House.

• In 2017, issues centered around national identity and openness ("if America is too open... we risk losing our identity"), the fairness of the economic system, obstacles facing women, and whether the country needs to keep making changes for Black equality emerged. This reflects a lot of the themes used in the 2016 presidential campaigns of Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, and Hillary Clinton. National identity was a unique focus of Trump’s campaign.

• By 2021, race and racial injustice were the sharpest between-party divide, and by 2026 the questions that define the typology are about national identity (whether the U.S. should have a Christian-based culture, whether openness to the world is essential or a threat), immigration and borders, gender identity and pronouns, the legacy of slavery, diversity efforts, trust in experts and institutions, and even political style - whether you enjoy seeing opponents humiliated.

All of these shifts from government efficiency and generosity to aggressive foreign policy, to size and role of government, to national identity were largely driven by Republican leaders and amplified on their media channels. When it comes to the meta narrative of the day, Republicans act and Democrats react. Democrats gain an advantage when Republicans don’t deliver on their vision or big crises emerge, and they are effective at messaging during presidential campaigns.3 However, Republicans have the ability to quickly pivot the dialogue away from their disasters like the 2008 financial crash, the botched Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and the catastrophic COVID response to something else. They effectively put Democrats on the defensive such as debt and deficits during the Obama years, and cultural and identity issues in the Trump-Biden years.

Dominating the larger narrative will only get more challenging as right-wing billionaires buy up and control more of our media ecosystem. This forces Democrats to rent space on their platforms, thus subsidizing the right-wing media dominance further.

The 2026 report also illustrates what holds the Republican and Democratic coalitions together and what drives them apart:

• The Republican Party is united on economic conservatism - smaller government and an economy based on capitalism - but split along three lines.

  • Culture and religion. This includes divisions on abortion, gun policy, and whether the U.S. should have a culture based in Christian beliefs.

  • Political style and tone. Some like it when politicians humiliate their opponents while others place a high value on civility.

  • Trump himself. Many approve of his job performance and call him the best president of the past 40 years. Others still rank Reagan above Trump. The groups that call Trump the best also favor deporting undocumented immigrants, while others back a path to legal status.

These differences will not be easy for Democrats to exploit. I have noticed when I test the idea of Republicans being “too extreme,” voters are least likely to be bothered by that as opposed to the impact of their extreme policies. Part of that is the idea of being “extreme” is too vague when what we really mean is that they are guided by “extreme religion.” Calling this out directly, however, leaves Democrats open to the charge of being “anti-religion” or “anti-Christian.” This needs nuance and that is not a Democratic campaign strength. As we see states pass abortion bans and extreme anti-LGBTQIA+ policies, and drive to implement them beyond their borders, this tension within the Republican coalition will grow. Democrats need to figure out how to campaign on the separation of church and state, and not get nervous when Republican cry foul to the media.

• The Democratic Party is united on the social safety net, the value of diversity, and opposition to Trump, but divided in four ways:

  • Crime and security: Some are more concerned about crime and more supportive of immigration restrictions than the groups to their left even though most of the left-leaning groups also consider secure borders important.

  • Gender identity and sexuality: Some are notably more moderate on these issues than others.

  • Economics and foreign policy: Some are more critical of the economic system and more skeptical of U.S. military power than others.

  • Feelings about the Democratic Party itself: The “Loyal Liberals” are attached to it while others view it less favorably and don’t believe the party cares about people like them.

What is striking in looking at these is how much the splits within the Democratic Party are played out largely in public and online, driven by both people within the coalition and those outside of it, while the splits in the Republican party are not.4 Also, I hear a lot about how “Democrats need to be more than just anti-Trump.” This is usually a prelude to taking sides in what divides the Democratic Party without acknowledging that a) like it or not, Trump drives our politics and has for more than a decade, and b) opposing Trump unites our side and divides theirs.

The goal of any campaign poll is to determine what unites our side, brings along the middle, and divides the other side. Democrats focusing much more on attacking the “Big Beautiful Bill” than Republicans are promoting it makes sense given how Democrats are united on the safety net and prioritize it. More challenging are the groups within the Democratic Party exploiting the differences for their own factional gain. It’s too easy to say “stop doing that” when each individual actor within the party is incentivized to engage in factional battle. While these internal fights go on,5 candidates and groups supporting them need to better understand how to heighten tensions within the Republican Party on culture and religion as well as strengthen and defend the safety net after Trump departs and the bill for his spending spree6 comes due. Trying to do that is the current media environment will be about as easy and reversing the revolution of earth’s axis, but it won’t happen unless we try.

Collins won in 2020 despite trailing in most polling which has helped her myth of invulnerability even though, despite Collins trailing in the polls I worked on, Sara Gideon never reached 50% of first place voters, was underwater on favorability, and trailed among the large share of voters who did not like either candidate. Despite the many issues and concerns with Graham Platner, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel where the oncoming train is poised to run over Collins’s 40+ year career in Washington DC. Some notes on the poll:

• Platner is at 49%. Gideon was never that high in most of the polling that was so heavily criticized in the wake of her loss. In the polls on that page, look at the first row for each. That is the first place vote. The second row, with Gideon over 50%, is after simulating ranked choice voting. There were two left-leaning independents on the ballot in 2020. Maine has voters rank their preferences and distribute the second and third place votes of those who get eliminated. If someone gets over 50%, like Collins did, those votes are not counted. Many of those would have gone to Gideon as Lisa Savage, who got nearly 5% of the vote, recommended voting for Gideon as second choice.

  “Savage, in an interview, said she approached the Gideon campaign with a proposal: both candidates would encourage their supporters, using the state’s atypical voting system, to rank the other as their second choice. She says the Gideon campaign declined to participate. And Savage is telling her supporters to rank Gideon second anyway, trying to block out the Republican senator.”

  In 2020 and in elections before that, Democrats did not win many races where they polled under 50%.

  

  The NY Times writeup for this poll brings up 2020 polling, but the bottom line is, in mid-September they only had Gideon at 44%. Where a Democratic is vis-à-vis 50% is the only thing that matters when assessing who is going to win, not the polling margin. Platner is nearly there after having a media month from absolute hell.

• Susan Collins’s image continues to erode. Her favorability in this poll is just 45% favorable - 50% unfavorable. In the Times’s 2020 poll, it was 50% favorable - 47% unfavorable. With people who consider themselves Independent (35% of this survey), she is at 47% favorable - 53% unfavorable compared to 48%-51% in 2020. These aren’t huge differences, but she barely squeaked by in 2020 and is far from her prime heights when her voodoo captivated Mainers and the power brokers in DC.

• We are six years on, and the Trump/Republican issues in Maine are even worse. Trump’s approval rating is just 38% now, barely changed from the depths of COVID in September 2020, and his economic approval rating is just 36%. 56% say that Trump’s polices have hurt Maine (only 18% say they have helped) and 54% are more concerned that Susan Collins will support Trump too much.

• Platner’s biggest challenge comes with voters over 65. In this poll, 54% of all voters say they prefer Democratic control of the Senate vs. 42% who prefer Republican control. 53% say they will vote for a Democrat for U.S. House versus 42% who support a Republican. Platner does better than House Dems with voters under 45. Unfortunately, they make up just 27% of the projected electorate in Maine compared with seniors who comprise 39%. Collins leads by 7 with seniors (51% to 44%) while House Dems lead by 13 (55% to 42%), a 20-point net difference.

  

• In interviews with strategists who recruited Platner, they were drawn to him because he was an oyster farmer with a populist working-class story that could address challenges Democrats have had with these voters since Donald Trump came down the escalator in 2015. That hasn’t really played out. Platner is losing men 52% to 45%. He is losing white non college voters 58% to 37% while winning white college voters 66% to 32%. The Times does not break education out by gender, but it is reasonable to assume there are significant gender gaps within both groups. The coalition supporting Platner is mostly similar to the one that supported Kamala Harris when she won the state by seven points.

• There really is no reason for outside groups to be spending in this race. Voters are largely decided and seeing an anti-Collins ad 151 times versus 100 times will not make a marginal difference. Maine is a small state with limited TV inventory. Platner raised over $16 million before the primary while Collins raised $15 million. In 2020, outside groups spent over $91 million on the Maine Senate race. This is pure insanity. If Democrats are to have a chance for a big election win this year, they need to invest in Kansas, Florida, Texas, and Nebraska - states we have not invested much in - as well as Alaska, Ohio, and North Carolina where Democrats have their strongest candidates who have won statewide before. There is no information Maine voters will get about Susan Collins that can be delivered better by a generic deep voice announcer talking over stock footage than can be by Graham Platner.

• An earlier version of the Times story included this quote:1

  

  Last I checked, an unenthusiastic vote counts the same as an enthusiastic one.

• My ego is so big, I think the Times writes stuff like this to deliberately trigger me: “The poll is the first high-quality survey of Maine voters conducted since Mr. Platner won the nomination.” They called over 35,000 voters to get 606 completed interviews, a 1.7% response rate. Their design effect from weighting is 1.48 in a 91% white state.2 I poll online, and I would not send out a poll with that much weighting without having dramatically changed my fielding strategy. At some point the whole idea of “live caller phone polling” = “high quality” needs to go away. It’s 2026. A 1.7% response rate live caller poll with a high design effect is not the same thing as a live caller poll done 20-30 years ago. There are “high quality” polls done in a variety of different modes.

For the post, I am going to define “Democracy” simply: every person has an equal say in the allocation of public resources. With that in mind, let’s go through the math of yesterday’s decision and the ramifications.

• 23,022,598 voters in the South2 chose Kamala Harris in 2024, 42.2% of the electorate.

• Kamala Harris received 13 of 183 Electoral College votes (7.1%) from these states.

• 4 Democrats3 represent their state in the U.S. Senate, 14.3% of the seats available. This is the lowest share of Democratic representation in the South since the beginning of the party.

• Democrats represent 44 out of 145 districts in the U.S. House of Representatives (28.4%)

The U.S. Senate and Electoral College are designed to be winner-take-all. The U.S. House is not, and this is why it is the one body closest to representing the share of the vote Kamala Harris received. The Supreme Court has fundamentally altered this.

Last year, Fair Fight Action and Black Voters Matter released an analysis of what Louisiana v. Callais could mean for the U.S. House. Here is the key table:

Factoring in last week’s vote in Virginia to remap the state from a 6-5 to a 10-1 Democratic majority, if this scenario above plays out this year and in 2028,4 Democratic representation will fall to 15.5% of the South.5

Tennessee Senator, and current gubernatorial candidate, Marsha Blackburn gave away the game yesterday after the decision:

Davidson County, where Nashville is located, voted 62.2% to 35.0% for Harris in 2024, but since the county was carved into four congressional districts extending out many miles to incorporate rural Tennessee, no Democrat represents any part of it. Shelby County, where Memphis is located and parts of which are represented by Steve Cohen, voted 61.5% to 36.2% for Kamala Harris. Shelby County is currently 52.8% Black and the city of Memphis is 62.9% Black. Marsha Blackburn is telling them that they should have no voice at all in how their tax dollars should be allocated. Because Donald Trump won the state, in Blackburn’s diseased mind, the votes of the 1,056,265 Tennesseans who voted for Kamala Harris should represent 0.0% of the decision making of the federal delegation of the state. It’s disgusting and vile.

While there is significant risk in drawing lines based solely on the 2024 presidential election, the intent of the decision written by the man whose flag flew upside down after Joe Biden’s victory was certified,6 is to lock in one-party control of the South going forward. There will be a few places, such as around Atlanta, that will be impossible for Republicans to crack, and some states like Virginia, Georgia, Texas, and North Carolina will be competitive in presidential and U.S. Senate elections. However, most Democratic voters, especially Black Democrats, will be shut out of decisions made with their money, just like in the years leading up to the Civil War,7 and the years between the end of Reconstruction and the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts which the John Roberts Court has repealed.

To overcome this, Democrats will need to win 69.8% of the Electoral College votes, 61.8% of the U.S. Senate seats, and 66.0% of the U.S. House seats outside of the South - a tall order given that Democrats currently hold only 57.0% of House seats, 56.6% of the Senate seats,8 and Kamala Harris won only 61.4% of the 368 Electoral College votes outside of the South. Democrats will need to run flawless campaigns every cycle in every state outside of the South to have any say in the allocation of public resources at any level. No more ceding states like Ohio and Iowa and planning to pull an inside straight on every hand dealt.

Meanwhile, let’s celebrate and honor the people who gave their lives so everyone, regardless of race, could vote and have their vote counted. The six “wise souls” on the Supreme Court9 have made their voice heard on what they think of them.

6

Today, failed Republican presidential candidate (and Florida governor) Ron DeSantis released a new map for Florida that supposedly could change the delegation from 20-8 to 24-4 Republican. This map strongly presupposes that nothing electorally has changed in the state since November 2024.

Looking at just the 2024 results seems pretty bad for Democrats. In only one district did Kamala Harris come within 10 points of Donald Trump. However, the 2024 election was just one moment in time. In these same districts in 2020, Joe Biden came within 10 points or less of Trump in 12 of them.

Trump has declined precipitously in Florida since he was inaugurated in 2025:

He has gone from +8 (52% approve - 44% disapprove) to -14 (41%-55%). He was at 46% approval on election day 2020. This post 2024 decline is reflected in special election results:

• April 2025 - CD-1 - 17 point Democratic overperformance

• April 2025 - CD-6 - 16 point Democratic overperformance

• March 2026 - FL-59 - 21 point Democratic overperformance and flip in Trump’s home Mar-a-Lago district1

In December 2025, Democrat Eileen Higgins defeated Republican Emilio Gonzalez by 18 points (59%-41%) to become Mayor of Miami and the first elected Democratic Mayor since 1997. The closest districts won by Republicans in 2020 were also in Miami.

While this map is being covered like the potential four seat gain is a fait accompli, it is far from it. Democratic candidate for Governor David Jolly is competitive against Byron Donalds.2 A map with a 13 point Republican statewide win could produce a 24-4 result in the U.S. House, but anything less than that won’t. This will result in many pissed off GOP incumbents competing in districts with new constituents and more Democrats than in their previous maps. This will also suck more GOP money into the Sunshine State to preserve even the existing 20-8 map. A real shame if that happens.

That is what happened here. “Yes” got what it got in polling. It was unrealistic to expect voters to approve of a congressional district remap at the same percentage they voted for Abigail Spanberger over Winsome Earle-Sears. Yes/No is not the same thing as contests between two flawed human beings, and no amount of handwringing to reporters will change that.

The results do provide some interesting clues of the political balance in the state. Basically, “Yes” won in the Democratic areas of the state - Northern Virginia, Richmond, Hampton Roads, areas around UVA and Virginia Tech, and the cities within Republican counties. It lost decisively everywhere else as Democrats do in every election in the state.

What’s more interesting is comparing the result to the 2021 Governor election. In 2021, Republican Glenn Youngkin beat Democrat Terry McAuliffe by a 50.6% to 48.6% margin. This was hailed at the time as “sending shockwaves” even though it was the smallest Republican gubernatorial victory in the state after a new Democratic president was sworn in the same year. McAuliffe’s 48.6%2 represented, at the time, the floor for Democrats in the state as 2021 was the only statewide election Republicans won since 2009. They haven’t won again since 2021.

It’s fair to say the new floor in the state is the 51.5% the “Yes” campaign received. Here is a comparison between McAuliffe and “Yes”:

This is a much different map than the previous. The “Yes” campaign outperformed McAuliffe by a small amount pretty much everywhere outside of the Shenandoah’s and Southwest, the one area of the state that will be left alone with more Republicans being added to the one district drawn for them. “Yes” gained almost everywhere in the northern, central, and eastern parts of the state - the areas that will be heavily impacted by the new maps.

Grouping the cities and counties up by region, “Yes” gained in all of them. The campaign gained the most in the most populous parts of the state where voters are most likely to be represented by someone new in the US House next year.

It’s a real shame that it all had to come to this and so much money had to be spent on something that will have no immediate impact on people’s lives outside of the consultants who made a fortune off of this. President Trump and his team made a decision to kick off remapping in Republican states because they don’t have the confidence in their own policies to take to the voters later this year. Instead of coming up with better policies, and not going into wars few want, they decided to try to rig the process in their favor. Fortunately Democratic voters in California and Virginia stepped up to balance the scales.

When the Republicans lose this fall, at least they can say the defeat wasn’t because of a lack of trying to cheat.

We are at the point where past political and economic experience cannot tell us what will happen going forward. We are in uncharted waters with a elderly, addled, pathetic lame-duck president with almost three years left who is completely incapable of doing the job but is backed up by a party that will cling to him no matter what. Meanwhile, the Dow keeps chugging along.

None of this is tenable and this will all break. We need real leadership in Washington right now, not next January before America ends up like the Trump Taj Mahal.

Last year, the Trump White House basically told the Texas legislature to remap their congressional districts to give them more seats. They went on to push that in more states and were successful in Ohio and North Carolina and might succeed in Missouri and Florida. Democrats successfully countered in California and got a favorable ruling in Utah to create a Democratic seat in Salt Lake City. In Virginia, we have a “nonpartisan” commission that is supposed to draw maps. They deadlocked and a Democratic judge and Republican operative drew the maps instead. The legislature put a constitutional amendment on the ballot to redraw the maps to a potential 10-1 Democratic majority that would be in place through 2030 when the commission will try again.

With two weeks to go, we are at the point in the cycle where Democrats start to panic and fret to reporters that they could lose. Since California voters passed their remap by a 64.4% to 35.6% margin, Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger won election last year by the largest margin for a Democrat since 1960 (57.6% to 42.2%), supporters of the amendment have outspent opponents, and the general Democratic overperformance in special elections in the Trump II era, I guess, has resulted in people thinking Democrats would be win this easily.1

This weekend, the Washington Post put out a poll by the well-respected Schar School at George Mason University that has generated panic. Some highlights:

Headline: “Poll shows mixed signs for Democratic push to gain seats in Congress”

“A slim majority of Virginia voters favors a redistricting measure to give Democrats as many as four extra seats in Congress this November.”

“The poll shows a considerably closer contest than the blue “tsunami” Democrats enjoyed in Virginia last year.”

Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) won the fall election by a 15-percentage point margin, but the poll shows that outpouring of support for Democrats is not transferring to the redistricting measure she supports.

“Given that the higher propensity and more highly motivated voters are opposed, this may be closer than the top-line result suggests,” said Mark Rozell, dean of George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government, which co-sponsored the poll. “Also, that the opposition has kept it reasonably competitive while being enormously outspent, suggests that a well-funded late push could turn this around. It is far from a done deal.”

Politico went further in their coverage of this poll:

Headline: “New poll comes with alarm bells for Democrats ahead of Virginia redistricting vote”

“Only a narrow majority of Virginians are supportive of a ballot referendum that would allow Democrats to gerrymander the state’s congressional map, a significant warning sign for the party ahead of the vote later this month.”

Democrats are increasingly worried they might come short in the election, despite enjoying a massive fundraising advantage over Republicans.

This follows up from an earlier story about the impact of the amendment vote on Governor Spanberger with the knives being sharpened if it fails:

With less than one month to go, nearly a dozen Democratic state lawmakers, strategists and candidates say Spanberger — Virginia’s popular Democratic governor who cruised to victory by double-digits last November — needs to step up more assertively to sell the referendum to voters. And they’re warning that she’ll bear the brunt of the blame if the effort fails.

“How could she watch what Gavin Newsom just did and do the exact opposite?” asked a Democratic activist in Virginia who has worked closely with the pro-redistricting campaign and was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “Out in the field, we really don’t know whether she is for or against this thing.”

That retort was insufficient for some Virginia Democrats, who were frustrated that Spanberger didn’t hit back even harder — or use the opportunity, on the heels of casting her “yes” ballot, to forcefully rebuke the misleading mailers Republican-aligned groups have circulated that suggest she is a “no” vote on redistricting.

“If it goes down,” the official said, “[Spanberger] is gonna own it [so she] might as well go out there.”

A lot of drama, but where does the amendment stand? Pollsters like me give clients books with thousands of numbers for every poll, but in reality, only one number matters - 50%. If a candidate or ballot initiative is over 50%, it’s going to win. If it is under 50%, it is going to be more challenging. After the 2020 election, I put this chart together to illustrate this.2

According to the Washington Post/Schar, despite the commentary, this amendment is poised to pass - 52% support redrawing the state’s maps while 47% are opposed. Voters might not be enthusiastic in some of the other questions in the poll, but it doesn’t matter. All the amendment needs to win is 50%. There is no point spread.

Any belief that the amendment should be further ahead because of Governor Spanberger’s victory makes little sense. In 2024, Kamala Harris won the state by 5.6 percentage points (51.6% to 46.0%), down from Joe Biden’s 11.1 margin in 2020 (54.1% to 44.0%). That basically matches the margin for the amendment in the Post poll. Using the Change Research vote choice model, I estimate the 2025 electorate was 52.6% Harris voters to 45.4% Trump voters. Spanberger won by 15.3 points because she persuaded a significant bloc of Trump voters to support her over Winsome Earle-Sears. An amendment over how much partisan advantage Democrats should have in the Virginia US House delegation is not the same thing as a state race between a well-funded Democrat and a deeply flawed Republican in the midst of a Republican government shutdown.

Despite an incredibly deceptive campaign by the opponents of the amendment (Barack Obama and Abigail Spanberger support the amendment), this amendment is poised to pass by roughly the current partisan breakdown of the state.3

Given that the Democratic National Committee has decided not to publish its report on how money was spent in 2024 and what went wrong in the campaigns and groups supporting the campaigns, all we are going to be left with are reports that feature opinions and cherry-picked data that boldly declare why Democrats lost. All my life, these generally hit the same note: “Democrats are too liberal and out of touch and their only path back from the wilderness is to either ‘moderate’ or adopt all my issue positions” (or both). These ideologically driven takes don’t bother me because of their content. Candidates calling themselves progressive, moderate, liberal, socialist, or conservative Democrats both win and lose elections every year and will continue to do so until Trump cancels them.1 They drive me crazy because of the certainty of the diagnosis and the singularity of the remedy.

American politics is not medicine and it certainly is not a series of math or electrical engineering equations. Turning a knob the right way or finding the precise coefficients won’t guarantee a victory between two flawed individuals seeking the votes of a public that both campaigns are desperately trying to confuse. Nevertheless, people persist in pumping this stuff out.

Several news outlets and organizations put out reports earlier this fall. I am not going to link to them here or try to directly refute them. Others have done that better (for example, see here and here). I want to explore two central questions that animate all of these takes:

1. Is the Democratic Party viewed as more liberal now than it was in previous elections?

2. Is the perception of the Democratic Party as too liberal the reason Kamala Harris narrowly lost?

When using polling and data to compare presidential elections, I find it most responsible to use a single data source that has a consistent methodology over time. The data below comes from the Cooperative Election Study which has done robust research in each of the last four elections with tens of thousands of interviews each year.2

Perceptions of the Democratic and Republican Parties

The CES asks voters’ perceptions of the ideology of each political party, the nominees of the party, and themselves. Looking at the chart below, in each election, a solid majority view the Democratic Party as liberal. The share of voters describing the party as liberal has increased by 5 points since 2012. Democrats won in 2012 and 2020 when 33% and 42% said the party is very liberal. They lost in 2016 and 2024 when 37% and 41% described the party as very liberal.

Despite the Democratic Party writing a more liberal platform3 in 2024 than it did in 2012, only a few more voters perceive the party as liberal now versus then. The Democratic Party will also be perceived as liberal in 2028, 2032, 2036, and so on until we stop having elections.4

The share of voters describing themselves as very liberal or liberal increased from 29% to 33% from 2012 to 2024. To get a better sense of whether the share of voters viewing the party as more liberal than them has changed, I coded the dataset to determine the share of voters who rate the party as more left than they are. Here is the trend:

The share of voters saying the Democratic Party is to the left of them has increased by just six-tenths of a percentage point over 12 years. While these ideological perceptions of the party as liberal have increased by relatively small amounts over the last 12 years, how have Democratic candidates done among those seeing the party to the left of them and those who don’t?

Democratic nominees get consistently crushed with voters who view the Democratic Party as to the left of them. Kamala Harris did worse than Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama. However, she also did worse than Joe Biden with the 40.4% of the electorate that do not think the Democratic Party is to the left of them. Comparing 2024 to 2020 directly - the 2020 is most directly analogous to 2024 since Kamala Harris was on the ticket in both elections against Donald Trump - Harris did 3.0 percentage points worse than Joe Biden (Kamala received 48.3% of the vote to Biden’s 51.3%).

Overall, 14.1% of the entire electorate in 2024 were Kamala Harris voters who believe the Democratic Party is to the left of them compared to 14.9% for Joe Biden in 2020. If Kamala Harris had declined by just 0.8 points among the electorate overall, she would have gotten a majority of the popular vote, something only eight other Democrats have done in the nearly 200-year history of the party.

This didn’t happen because 34.2% of the electorate consisted of Harris voters who do not believe the Democratic Party is to the left of them compared to 36.4% for Biden, a 2.4 percentage point drop.5

Comparing Kamala Harris to Barack Obama, the decline in her overall vote is mostly among those who believe the Democratic Party is to the left of them (14.1% Harris, 17.1% Obama) and not from those who don’t (34.2% Harris, 34.0% Obama). It’s undeniable that Kamala Harris was seen as the more liberal of the last four Democratic nominees. That is different, however, from saying that the perception of the Democratic Party, as opposed to the candidates, is why Harris lost in 2024 and Obama won in 2012.

Despite moments like this:

And this:

Kamala Harris was viewed as more liberal than any other recent nominee. She is also the only nominee to not compete in a primary campaign. This won’t be replicated in 2028.

This poll also asked about Joe Biden’s ideology in 2020 and 2024. While many pundits talked about how much “further to the left” Biden governed than how he ran for president, perceptions of Biden as a liberal only ticked up a couple of points overall. The share describing him as “very liberal” increased by one point. Solid majorities viewed him as liberal when he won in 2020 and when his vice president lost in 2024.

So why do people reject the Democratic Party? Shortly after Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance, I fielded a survey of nearly 3,600 voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. I asked this question: “What frustrates you most about the Democratic Party and would make you not want to vote for them?” For this survey, I isolated the “movable” voters from those firmly committed to Trump or Biden. They are defined as:

• Undecided or volunteer that they are voting for some other candidate

• Support Trump or Biden but say they could change their mind

• Somewhat disapprove of Biden’s job performance or say they are unsure

Movable voters made up 24% of the responses. Going through the responses, several themes emerge:

Broad Dissatisfaction / Values Mismatch (~27%)
A generalized rejection of the Democratic Party, often without anchoring their frustration to a specific policy or leader. These responses convey alienation, dislike of politicians, or a belief that Democrats no longer reflect their values or interests.
• “We do not hold the same values.”
• “The Democratic Party has nothing in common with my political views.”
• “I cannot vote for democrats.”

Biden’s Age, Health, and Fitness for Office (~22%)
Joe Biden’s age, cognitive ability, physical health, and fitness to serve as president. Respondents frequently describe him as too old, frail, or mentally unfit and express anger that the party continues to support him rather than offering an alternative.
• “Biden is too old and appears frail.”
• “Joe Biden is not medically fit to be president right now.”
• “Why would they let Joe run again? Grandpa POTUS needs to retire.”

Culture-War / Social Issues (~10%)
Democrats focus too heavily on social and cultural issues such as LGBTQ+ rights, gender identity, race, DEI, abortion, and gun policy. These concerns are often framed as divisive distractions from economic or material issues.
• “Annoying congress politicians. Wokeness. Lack of common sense.”
• “Too much emphasis on DEI and heavy handed on climate change policies.”
• “The ‘woke’, cancel culture, give anyone who cries their way.”

Economy, Inflation, and Cost of Living (~7%)
Inflation, food prices, housing costs, healthcare expenses, and wages not keeping pace with the cost of living. Many say Democratic economic messaging conflicts with lived experience.
• “The cost of food has skyrocketed.”
• “Current inflation and the cost of supporting a family in todays world.”
• “Saying that they’re gonna fix the economy… but so far haven’t seen any sort of change.”

Incompetence, Weakness, and Inaction (~6%)
See Democrats as ineffective, weak, or unwilling to fight for their priorities. Complaints include broken promises, excessive compromise, and lack of decisive action.
• “All talk and little walk.”
• “They can’t seem to make progress when they are in office.”
• “God, do they ever get anything done or do they always just roll over?”

Immigration and Border Policy (~5%)
Border enforcement, costs, and prioritization of non-citizens over citizens.
• “Why is the border open and all these people coming here?”
• “Immigration!!!! The border, the economy.”
• “Letting ILLEGAL ALIENS in and not deporting.”

Israel / Gaza and Foreign Policy (~4%)
Express anger at Democratic support for Israel, particularly regarding Gaza, often framing it as a moral failure.
• “Funding Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.”
• “Joe Biden is funding genocide in Palestine.”
• “Their moral spinelessness on the clear humanitarian crisis in Palestine.”

Everything / Too Much to List (~3%)
Don’t isolating a single issue, instead express blanket dissatisfaction.
• “Everything.”
• “Where do I begin?”
• “Too many to list.”

Taxes, Spending, and Big Government (~3%)
Taxation, government spending, deficits, welfare, and foreign aid.
• “Tax and spend.”
• “Bloated government that costs me a shit ton of money.”
• “Over taxation to support wasteful programs & bad ideas.”

Two-Party System Cynicism (~3%)
Frustration with the political system as a whole rather than Democrats alone.
• “The two party system is bs.”
• “Both parties are awful.”
• “Politics has become a reality show.”

Ideological Extremism / Broad Ideological Rejection (~3%)
A rejection of Democrats in sweeping ideological terms.
• “They’re communists.”
• “That fact that they want to turn the US into a Communist Socialist state.”
• “Too socialist big goverment.”

Corruption, Corporate Control, and Elites (~2%)
Accuse Democrats of corruption, elite capture, or corporate control.
• “They are bought and paid for by the super wealthy.”
• “Corporate puppets.”
• “The represent the top 20%, no one else.”

A single unified theory does not explain why people reject Democrats. It takes a village. Kamala Harris lost for many reasons other than simply “Dems are too woke” just as Joe Biden and Barack Obama’s victories did not produce the dawn of a new liberal age. Win or lose in 2028, the Democratic Party and the nominee will be viewed as more liberal than the electorate. Victory will be determined by whether they can provide the most compelling vision for the future, not on how ChatGPT compares the ideological lean of the party’s 2028 platform to 2012.

At the Turning Point USA Palooza this weekend, top-billed headliner JD Vance threw out this pearl of wisdom:

JD Vance: “In the United States of America, you don’t have to apologize for being white anymore.”

I guess JD has missed all the books and think pieces on how the Republican Party is now “a multiracial working-class party” and that Democrats are “doomed” because “young Hispanic and Black ‘non college’ men are fleeing the party,” among such overwrought punditry that spewed out of the wreckage of the 2024 campaign. Turns out the 2024 election, and the Trump-Vance presidency, is about white people being fully comfortable proudly declaring their whiteness1 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I have only worked for Democrats (Thank God) in my career, so I don’t know what goes into briefing a Republican about to make a high-profile speech, but what truly shocks me is that this line made it through to the stage. No adviser saw any problem with the Vice-President saying this out loud in the year 2025. His little smirk at the end, shows it wasn’t an ad-lib. Maybe this was a compromise from an initial line even more racist and incendiary.

It hasn’t always been like this in the Republican Party. In 2002, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott lost his leadership post for saying this in tribute to Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond at Strom’s 100th birthday party2:

Trent Lott: I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for President, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have all these problems over all these years either.

This is the presidential campaign that Trent Lott said would have prevented the “problems” brought on by ending racial segregation:

To reiterate, in the 21st century, a Republican congressional leader stepped down from his post after saying something a little too uncomfortably racist at a time when Republicans controlled the White House, the U.S. Senate, and the U.S. House. Fox News, the internet, and conservative talk radio were all around at the time and thriving. Still, President George W. Bush did not come out to strongly defend him3 and Lott later left the Senate in 2006 to embark on an extremely lucrative lobbying career.4

While JD Vance is a ridiculous and absurd character in American life, because of the rapidly declining mental and physical health of our sick and demented President and the post FEC v. Citizens United world bequeathed to us by the wise souls on the Supreme Court, there is an uncomfortably high chance he will become President soon.

In the Before Times, back when Republicans didn’t nominate game show hosts for President, you could assess candidates based on how they ran for lower offices. Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama ran for office many times and all had significant losses at some point in their careers. But they had many wins where, as normal, talented politicians, they successfully engaged the public over a long period of time. JD Vance has never done this.

After changing his name many times, and writing a book that many bought, but few read,5 JD decided to run for the U.S. Senate in Ohio. Because of the US Supreme Court’s FEC v. Citizens United decision, wealthy individuals got the ability to personally bankroll a candidate’s campaign. That is what Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel, of Antichrist fame, did for JD. He spent $15 million on a Super PAC supporting him during the primary. That allowed him to compete in a field of more experienced candidates. However, with less than a month to go, JD was in fifth place according to one poll and trailing in most others. Then, using a relationship he forged with Donald Trump Jr., JD got the coveted endorsement of Donald Trump and went on to capture a whopping 32.2% of the primary vote with other candidates splitting the remaining two-thirds.

JD then went on to beat Democrat Tim Ryan for Senate by six points (53%-47%) in an electorate that went for the Republican Governor Mike DeWine by 25 points. In total, he raised just over $15 million, far less than outside spending promoting him and attacking Tim Ryan.

This type of victory would have never been achievable without the Citizens United decision. Vance was viable in the primary, despite floundering, because of Peter Thiel’s money. Without that money, he doesn’t get Trump’s endorsement. As a result, he could ride the wave of Republican partisanship to the Senate and not learn things like “use your inside voice when you feel the urge to say racist things.”

Now that he is Vice-President, again by working Thiel and Trump Jr., JD is far and away the GOP frontrunner for President in 2028:

If and when JD is sworn in as President, it will be appropriate that John Roberts will be administering the oath.6 JD Vance owes his political career to a select few individuals, but none more so than John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, and Anthony Kennedy. Without them, Peter Thiel would be just another billionaire frustrated that he can’t buy elections for his lieutenants.

Heading into the election, Democrats held a narrow 51-49 majority in the state House using maps first drawn for the 2023 election. In 2024, Kamala Harris won 59 House seats to Donald Trump’s 41. She won all 51 of the districts that voted for Democrats in 2023 plus 8 districts held by Republicans. This year, Democrats flipped all eight of these Harris districts.

In 2023, five Democrats lost by less than 5 percentage points. Only one lost by double digits. Kamala Harris won these narrowly as did all eight of the Democrats who flipped them. Only one 2025 candidate won by double digits. These seats will be exceedingly hard for Republicans to pick up for the rest of the decade unless something dramatically shakes up the political environment by 2029 in their favor. Given that Donald Trump will be president until January 20, 2029, it is challenging to imagine what that event would be.2

In addition to cleaning the political tree of its low-hanging fruit, Virginia Democrats flipped five additional districts won by Donald Trump last year.

Kamala Harris lost these five districts only narrowly in 2024, none by more than five points. The most a 2025 Democrat won by was 6.2 points. The Democratic candidate for District 69 in 2023 had to withdraw, but the other four lost by between 0.7 and 11.5 points. On the whole, Democrats lost only narrowly in these districts in either 2023 or 2024.

Virginia Democrats were able to achieve these gains through the hard work of raising more money and deploying it efficiently. The chart below shows spending by district type.

Democrats spent more money in the eight Kamala Harris districts they flipped than in the 51 Harris districts they held. In the flipped districts, Democrats outspent Republicans by over $20 million.

While Democrats were able to flip eight districts won by Kamala Harris in Virginia, there are only three congressional districts in the entire country won by Harris and represented by a House Republican (Nebraska-2, New York-17, and Pennsylvania-1).3 While Rep. Don Bacon in NE-2 has announced his retirement, Mike Lawler in NY-17 has raised $3,928,851.06 this year. Brian Fitzpatrick in PA-1 has raised $3,421,534.

In Virginia, Democrats flipped all five Trump districts held by Republicans and where Kamala Harris got more than 47.5% of the vote. However, there are only seven of these districts nationwide (AZ-01, AZ-06, CO-08, MI-07, NJ-07, PA-07, VA-02). Each of the Republicans in these districts has raised close to or more than two million dollars so far this year.

Finally, in Virginia, Democrats did not have to defend any seat held by a Democrat that was won by Trump. Nationally, they have to hold 13 of them.4 Fortunately for U.S. House Democrats, they only need to net three seats to capture the majority and give Mike Johnson more time to adjust his Covenant Eyes account settings, but they are operating on a much narrower battlefield than Virginia Democrats.

In Virginia, where the Republican Lt. Governor spent millions of dollars fighting wars against trans people and even appropriated the line that so many said won the race last year for Trump - “Abigail Spanberger is for they/them, Winsome Earle-Sears is for you” - Abigail Spanberger led a historic rout, winning 57.5% of the vote. To put that in perspective, no Democrat has achieved a share that high since 1961, the last election before the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

The Democrats in Virginia are in position to win 64 out of 100 seats for the House of Delegates. When Donald Trump “came down the escalator” at Trump Tower in 2015 and declared for President in front of a paid audience, Democrats only held 32 seats in that chamber, so gerrymandered it was that Democrats made no gains despite sweeping the statewide offices in 2013. Since then, Democrats have doubled their total, breaking a rigged map and making substantial gains in 2017, 2019, 2023, and 2025. That is all Donald Trump. He did this. As a Virginian, I thank him as there was no path for that kind of majority, one not seen since the 1987 election.

In New Jersey, despite several red-wave pollsters pumping out numbers showing the race for Governor tied, Mikie Sherrill won comfortably by 56.2% to 43.2%. This is the first time Democrats have won an election following a two-term Democratic governor since Richard Hughes won narrowly in 1961 to replace Robert Meyner. Mikie Sherrill ended up doing better than current Governor Phil Murphy did eight years ago (56.2% versus 56.0%). So much for “Democratic fatigue.” This election was projected to be close because Kamala Harris only won it by six points, down from Joe Biden’s 16 point margin. New Jersey was supposedly “becoming a swing state” on the strength of “Hispanic voters joining a new multi-racial working class Republican Party.” Ooops:

My own bellwether for whether this shift among Hispanic voters to the Republican party was real or a figment in the minds of celebrity pundits and podcasters is West New York Town. Right across the Hudson from Manhattan, West New York is an 80%+ Hispanic community. In 2020, it gave Joe Biden 69.0% of the vote. In 2024, 9% fewer people voted and Kamala Harris only received 55.3% of the vote. Yesterday, Mikie Sherrill won with 77.8% of the vote.

All too often when trying to understand where American voters are, we get trapped by recency bias. The last election supposedly gives us a definitive path for where people want the country to go. Sometimes though, an election is just an election and tells us nothing about the future, just that one person beat another person. Many have treated the 2024 election like a holy writ when it is really just an election. Donald Trump won with 49.8% of the vote. Voters wanted lower prices and stability they have not felt since before COVID. Trump has governed like a madman - doing what he wants with no pushback, having masked agents grab people off the street, blowing up boats far away from our shores, pardoning violent felons who engaged in seditious conspiracy against our country, destroying the federal government and driving thousands upon thousands of dedicated people out of public service, and knocking down the White House to build a tacky palace.

Combined with the Wisconsin Supreme Court election in the spring, and dozens of special elections across the country, voters spoke as clearly as they could that they don’t want this. We don’t want to live in an authoritarian regime run by a demented game show host who is losing his grip on reality more and more each day. Our votes matter too, not just MAGA’s. And hopefully this puts to rest all of the 2024 takes and we start seeing it for the outlier election it was.

“When voters are lied to by the Democrats and national media pundits, we get beat,” Rep. Addison McDowell (R-N.C.) said. “When voters are told the truth about what Republicans in Congress are actually doing, we win.”

“There seemed to be some recognition that we’re in trouble,” said a second House Republican.

Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters after the meeting that the “working families” pivot was “not a rebranding.”

“House Republicans went out, panned out across the country over the district work period, and got a lot of work done,” he said. “And they were talking about the one big, beautiful bill, which has also become known as the working families tax cut act, because that’s what it principally represents.”

It’s never a good sign when all you are left with is, “Sure, we are losing now, but when people find out what we are doing, we will win.” Just ask Joe Biden. However, as a thought exercise, let’s take Addison McDowell at his word: What’s in this bill that is so great?

For one, if you are an investor in a horseracing syndicate, you can now deduct the cost of buying a new horse in the tax year of the purchase and not have to spread the depreciation over multiple years. Here is a clip from the “Off the Rail” podcast featuring former Major League Baseball players Jayson Werth and Shawn Kelley explaining this:

Werth and Kelley have gone all in on horse racing since ending their careers in baseball and had their horse, “Flying Mohawk,” win the Belmont Stakes in 2024. This career transition has been underwritten by Werth making $136 million in his baseball career and Kelley $25 million. They are far from alone in expanding their syndicate. At a time when Americans say they are stuck economically and low-income Americans are slashing spending, the Keeneland Association’s September horse auction set a record this month:

The 2025 Keeneland September Yearling Sale closed Saturday having achieved a defining industry milestone. Over 12 sessions, the sale rewrote records by selling 3,070 horses for a total of $531.5 million: the highest gross ever realized at a Thoroughbred auction worldwide. Historic highlights included 56 yearlings bringing seven figures, besting the previous record of 40 set in 2005 and led by a $3.3 million Gun Runner colt purchased by M.V. Magnier, Peter Brant’s White Birch Farm and Ron Winchell’s Winchell Thoroughbreds.

Held Sept. 8-20, the auction produced $510,544,900 in through-the-ring sales to finish 23.99% higher than last year’s $411,749,500. Gross sales increased to $531,520,400 when the additional $20,975,500 in post sales reported to date are added. The combined figure also tops the previous record gross of nearly $428 million from 2024.

A key part of Democratic messaging guidance about the tax bill that produced this bounty for buyers and sellers of racehorses is to “call attention to the reason why Republicans in Congress want to cut Medicaid so they can afford more tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations.” To keep this bill as unpopular as it is now when Americans go to vote in the 2026 midterms, just repeating poll-tested mantras will not be enough. Voters think in narratives and stories. Fortunately, the BBB is full of stories like this one: of forgotten multi-millionaire racehorse investors, who are fully seen and heard by the Republican regime while millions of less wealthy Trump voters get left behind. Democrats must get specific and tell these stories in graphic and compelling ways.

Postscript - Jayson Werth and Shawn Kelley are the least likely people for Nationals fans to forget. I will never forget this moment by Jayson Werth (especially memorable since I immediately left the stadium to get to George Mason for a matrix algebra exam that I completely bombed).

I will also never forget Werth striking out twice with a runner on third and one out, with the Nationals clinging to a 1-0 lead in Game 5 of the 2016 NLDS that the Nats went on to lose. Or him losing the ball in the lights in the seventh inning of Game 5 of the 2017 NLDS which allowed the Cubs to tack on insurance runs and win the series. I also have not forgotten Shawn Kelley’s last appearance with the Nats, when he melted down on the mound while struggling to hold on to a 25-1 lead.

The conclusions of this piece are solid:

• Abandon campaign-cycle thinking — Mr. Kirk built permanent social infrastructure, not seasonal outreach.

• Meet young men in cultural spaces — Democratic politics should be made to feel organic in gaming, fitness and entrepreneurship communities.

• Show leadership in hostile settings — Democrats must appear regularly on conservative podcasts and college campuses without scripts.

• Highlight tangible economic pathways — talk up legislation that helps create opportunities for apprenticeships with living wages and housing policies that deliver affordability in young Americans’ lifetimes.

• Create safe forums for talking about identity — Democrats need to form more spaces for discussing masculinity and purpose without ideological judgment.

This column fits well within the “Democratic Party sucks - Here is what they should do to fix it” genre. The problem is that the “Democratic Party” as broadly defined is completely incapable of following this advice.

The “Democratic Party” consists of many things: elected Democratic officials, outside groups that share its goals and try to shape the party’s focus, the campaign and consultant industrial complex, the donor industrial complex, and the national, state, and local Democratic party entities. If this advice is for the people competing for office this year and next, or for people running for president in 2028, great. They should do all of these things because they are running on their personal brand much more than any party brand. If the advice is for outside groups and their uber wealthy donors, particularly those with the most funding and influence in electoral politics like the Future Forward Super PAC, even better. Groups like Future Forward are the closest analogs to Turning Point USA. If this advice is for Democratic party infrastructure to mirror TPUSA infrastructure, it will fail because the mission of a political party is, by law, not the same thing as TPUSA’s mission.

Earlier in the column, Della Volpe says: “Mr. Kirk’s organization, Turning Point USA, didn’t create a traditional political network; it built a network of belonging, where community came before ideology, and culture became a driving force in politics.” By definition, TPUSA was built outside of the Republican Party, with tax-exempt 501(c)(3) money that cannot be used to support candidates for office, and created a network of belonging outside of electoral politics. TPUSA’s biggest funders include a who’s who of conservative megadonors:

• The Ed Uihlein Family Foundation (Richard Uihlein, of Uline)

• The Rauner Family Foundation (run by former Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner)

• The Foglia Family Foundation

• The Marcus Foundation (Bernie Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot)

• The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation

• The Michael and Andrea Leven Family Foundation

• The Huizenga Foundation

• The Mike Miller Foundation

• Dunn’s Foundation for the Advancement of Right Thinking

• The Einhorn Family Foundation

• Lynn Friess & Foster Friess family

• The Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation (run by the in-laws of former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos)

• The Gianforte Family Foundation (run by Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte

• The Thomas Patrick Morrison Foundation

• The Family Taxpayer’s Foundation

When Charlie Kirk went to organize college campuses, he was clearly seen as outside the cringy Republican and Democratic parties that few young people like and want to identify with. He built a brand separate from the Republican Party. He also clearly used tax-exempt money and didn’t worry about TPUSA’s tax status when making political comments - unlike many Democratic and progressive organizations, which are warned against doing by our expensive election and tax lawyers. This enabled TPUSA to fuse with Trump and the Republican Party while maintaining a separate outsider brand.

In FY2024, TPUSA reported $85 million in revenue and spent it on events, building community, and connecting human beings to other human beings IRL. While a significant amount, it pales in comparison to Future Forward which raised over $900 million in the 2024 election cycle to support Kamala Harris and other Democratic candidates. Much of that money was spent on polling and advertising. Future Forward did grant money to groups doing field organizing but did no human being to human being organizing itself. This fits with a long standing patterns of Republican groups spending 10-20x on voter registration as compared to Democratic groups. The only thing Future Forward does IRL is organize retreats in exclusive clubs where a select group of donors and operatives can munch on heirloom tomato carpaccio, beef tenderloin, and seared sea bass.

The decision to build the perfect advertising and message testing mousetraps, filtering all creative through them to maximize “efficiency,” and spending hundreds of millions of dollars airing it right before an election to minimize “ad decay” is a choice Democratic donors - as opposed to “the Democratic party” - made. It is part of a long-standing desire to bring efficiency and hard science into electoral politics at the expense of organizing humans.

The unpopularity of the Democratic Party, particularly among Democrats, cannot be denied, but it’s a trap to equate the party broadly to organizations that can do things like TPUSA does. People don’t look to political parties to solve the problems in their lives. They look to government and other civil society groups with which they feel a personal connection. There is no one message or thing the “Democratic Party” can do to magically change its perception. National, state, and local party committees can connect people locally, but they represent only part of a broader ecosystem. Creating something like TPUSA has to be done outside party infrastructure and funded by the people who have chosen not to support that type of organizing at scale. That is where specific criticism needs to be directed as opposed to the amorphous “Democratic Party.”

As much fun as it would be to go through the 30+ year history of party registration in 30 states, I am just going to focus on North Carolina. The state has added several million new voters since the early 1990s, and statewide elections for president and U.S. Senate are decided by a couple of percentage points. Democrats usually wind up on the short end of the stick in these contests. At the same time, Democrats have won 8 of the last 9 elections for governor. The party should, in theory, have the manpower and resources to invest in party registration in a serious way.

In 1993, after the passage of the National Voter Registration Act (“Motor Voter,”) which required states to offer voter registration opportunities when individuals apply for or renew a driver’s license and at public agencies, such as offices providing public assistance or disability services, Democrats held a 945,429-registration advantage over the Republican Party. Today, that margin is just 107,150. In terms of total number of registered voters, Democrats today are now at about the level they were in 2003–2004. Republican registration has steadily grown, while unaffiliated registration has skyrocketed over the last three decades. Unaffiliated voters do not face a penalty for not registering with a party. They can vote in Democratic primaries. However, this growing lack of Democratic identity hinders the long-term growth of the party. A healthy party should be attracting new voters, but this one hasn’t been for a long time.

Looking at the overall share of the electorate registered as Democrats underscores just how dramatically the party has fallen. The share has dropped from 59.5% in 1993 to 31.3% today. It only ever increased in the run-up to Barack Obama’s historic victory in 2008, when he became the first Democratic nominee since Jimmy Carter in 1976 to capture the state. No Democrat has prevailed since.

Broken out by presidential administration, Democratic registration grew in the 1990s and 2000s at a slightly slower rate than Republican and unaffiliated registration. The party was adding 150,000–300,000 voters every cycle. In the period leading up to the 2008 presidential election, when the national party was run by Howard Dean, Democratic registration increased at a rate four times greater than Republican registration.

Since Barack Obama’s election in 2008, Democratic registration has fallen while Republican and unaffiliated registration has increased.

This occurred while massive amounts of money flooded the state in presidential and U.S. Senate campaigns. The two parties have contested the state in every statewide federal election since 2008, with the exception of 2010, when Secretary of State Elaine Marshall was largely ignored by Washington D.C. as she sought to unseat former Senator Richard Burr. Overall, Democratic candidates and outside groups have spent $360,719,518 on U.S. Senate races in the Obama/Biden/Trump era, while Democratic registration has fallen by 327,364 voters.

The Democratic Party has successfully recruited former Governor Roy Cooper to run for U.S. Senate in 2026. It will be one of the most competitive elections in the country and will determine control of the chamber. It is not unreasonable to expect that Democrats will raise and spend over $200,000,000 on Cooper. It would be nice for a small fraction of this to go toward increasing Democratic voter registration, but I am not holding my breath.