Politics
NEW: Poll Shows Democrat Party In Dangerous Territory For 2026
Optimism is a rare commodity in the Democratic Party these days.
New polling numbers show just how down on their luck Democrats are feeling six months after the election. Skepticism has blanketed both the young and old and crossed racial demographics to such a degree that party leaders remain flummoxed about how to fix their image with voters.
The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research released a poll in May showing that only about one-third of Democrats have a “very optimistic” or even “somewhat optimistic” view of their party. That’s down sharply from nearly a near ago, when in July 2024 about 6 in 10 Democrats said saw their party making progress.
Then came the disastrous debate by President Joe Biden, leading to his decision to drop out of the race. Since then, Democrats’ approval ratings have been riding a sinking ship to the briny bottom of modern polling.
“I’m not real high on Democrats right now,” Damien Williams, a 48-year-old Democrat from Cahokia Heights, Illinois, told the AP. “To me, they’re not doing enough to push back against Trump.”
Williams, a member of the Teamster union which remained neutral in the 2024 election for the first time in recent history, said his party’s ails won’t be cured “until somebody steps up in terms of being a leader that can bring positive change — an Obama-like figure.”
The poll comes at a critical juncture for Democrats: Some figures such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA), and former Clinton advisor James Carville have pleaded for party activists to jettison their purity tests, especially on unpopular social issues they believe contributed to the Harris camp’s implosion on election night.
The Trump campaign used as an albatross the former vice president’s Democratic primary promise to support taxpayer-funded sex changes for convicted felons and illegal immigrants, just one of several far-left positions that left Americans feeling alienated by today’s Ivy-educated Democratic Party.
In the latest poll, rank-and-file party members offer mixed opinions about some of the most prominent Democrats on the national stage.
Only 4 in 10 voters have a favorable view of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) as he tries to reinvigorate a progressive and populist base that helped propel his two unsuccessful campaigns for the White House. That number is about 3 in 4 Democrats, in constrast.
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY), Sanders’s private jet flight-mate for the nationwide “Fight Oligarchy” tour, is less popular within their party, with only about half of Democrats holding a positive impression of her.
That’s bad news for the “Squad” founder, who some sources say has her eyes set on the 2028 election even as constituents back home decry her lack of attention to the block-and-tackle issues of representing them in Congress.
But the most unpopular Democratic leader by far remains Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the emasculated Senate minority leader who lost the trust of his party earlier this year after urging Senate Democrats to join him in voting for a Republican-led bill to stop a government shutdown. Just 1 in 3 Democrats hold a favorable impression of the longtime party boss.
“I just feel like the majority of the old Democratic Party needs to go,” said Democrat Monica Brown, a 61-year-old social worker from Knoxville, Tennessee. “They’re not in tune with the new generation. They’re not in tune with the new world. We’ve got such division within the party.”
Williams, the Teamster from Illinois, said the chaos coming out of Washington, D.C. has left him feeling that only a new generation of leaders will be able to clean up the mess left behind by Biden, Harris, and their enablers.
“I’m going to need to see some wins for America, for humanity, before I can be optimistic right now,” he said. “Every day is just a constant barrage of negative feelings and news politically. It’s all screwed up right now.”
