In the aftermath of the election, Democrats are pointing fingers about who was to blame for the billion dollar campaign disaster. There is some recognition that Democrats were out of touch, and that they need to overhaul the party’s messaging. But at the heart of the messaging disconnect was that Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party have moved far left and away from the ideology of the electorate.
Exit polls show the brand images of the two candidates were about the same (Harris: 46-52 favorable-unfavorable; Trump, 46-53), but there was one clear difference between the two: Donald Trump was seen as much closer to the ideology of the electorate than Kamala Harris.
In our Winston Group Election survey of 1,250 respondents who voted in the election, we asked voters to rate themselves on a scale of 1-9 with 1 being very liberal, 5 moderate and 9 very conservative. Voters placed themselves at a 5.41 — center-right.
- The ideology of the average voter (5.41) is closer to Republicans in Congress (6.94) than it is to Democrats in Congress (3.27). This puts Congressional Republicans significantly closer (1.53) to voters than Congressional Democrats (2.14).
- Donald Trump is seen as slightly farther to the right (7.17) than Republicans in Congress (6.94), while Joe Biden (3.29) is about on par with Democrats in Congress (3.27).
- Coming in at 2.96, Kamala Harris is seen as even farther to the left of Biden and Democrats in Congress.
- The ideological distance between voters overall and Donald Trump (1.76) is much closer than the distance between Harris and voters (2.45).
- Harris was farther away from the ideology of the average voter (a distance of 2.45) than Biden (2.12).
From a messaging perspective, our survey showed that the top two messages voters heard from Democrats were based-focused topics: abortion and threats to democracy. Only 7% heard an inflation message from Democrats, with about the same percentage (8%) hearing about January 6. The leftward move of the Democrats was undoubtedly a contributor to the decline of Democrats as a percentage of the electorate — from 37% in 2020 down to 31% in 2024 — a historic low.
For more analysis, see our post-election report.
