The report comes from Way to Win, a left-leaning “strategic donor collaborative and strategy hub” founded after the 2016 election. The report, a compilation and analysis of the surveys and focus groups they’ve done since the 2024 election, looks not just at swing voters but the entire coalition, including those who voted for President Biden in 2020 and then sat out the 2024 election. This presents a fuller picture than analyses that simply conclude the electorate swung right last November. While some Biden 2020 voters did vote for Trump last year, a substantial number stayed home. This changed the composition of the electorate, and made it look more Republican than it really was. Those who sat it out in November are much more politically aligned with Democrats but weren’t motivated to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris and downballot Democrats. Determining what they want from future candidates tells a different story than centrists might hope.
Fundamental to the report is an important corrective. While many observers have argued that Democrats lost last year because the party had moved too far left, Way to Win makes the case that voters don’t actually apply neatly defined ideological frames when they evaluate candidates’ policies and choose whom to vote for. Their decisions are more complex and filtered through their social, family, and work lives—a conclusion supported by much political science research. “When you go knock on doors, you hear all kinds of stories, but they almost never have to do with detailed policies or ideological framing,” the report says.
This was especially true of those who skipped voting in 2024. In the important sunbelt states, these voters were 13 percent of the 2020 coalition, and a majority said they would have voted for Harris if they’d voted in 2024 rather than sitting out. These voters didn’t want Democrats to moderate. They wanted a stronger economic message and wanted Democrats to fight for them. But they often felt like they’d been supporting Democrats for years and hadn’t gotten results.
The perception of Democrats as weak was partly shaped by Republican attacks rather than Democratic messages themselves. As an example, voters surveyed by Way to Win said that Harris’s campaign was mostly concerned with trans issues. In reality, it wasn’t a big part of her campaign, Fernandez Ancona said. But trans issues played a starring role in ads from the opposition.
Too often, Democratic messages end up reinforcing the story that Republicans are telling, Way to Win says. The report pointed to the losing campaigns of Sen. Sherrod Brown in Ohio and Sen. Jon Tester in Montana, who touted their support of conservative immigration policies. Instead, Democrats need to tell their own story when it comes to immigration, one that highlights the contributions immigrants make and argues that legal immigration should be easier.
And Anat Shenker-Osorio, a political strategist and messaging consultant, has made the same arguments. She says Democrats need to embrace “magnetism,” which is similar to the “strength” that Way to Win advocates: Staking out forceful positions that risk pushing some voters away but are also much more likely to attract voters than simply taking whatever positions the polls suggest.
This could also help motivate the Democratic base, which performs an important function: When grassroots movements and reliable voters align with the party, they help build excitement and spread the word on behalf of candidates. Granted, the havoc and wreckage of the second Trump administration is sufficiently motivating voters to come out for Democrats, as we saw in the November elections and this past Tuesday. That may well remain true in 2026 and 2028. But to win big and, more importantly, hold onto power, the Democrats need to work harder to build a party brand that answers voters’ real concerns and differentiates them from Republicans. That doesn’t mean behaving like a weather vane, turning in whichever direction the political winds blow. It means having the courage and strength to make your own weather.
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