Many Americans say they do not believe the Democratic Party is focused on the economic issues that matter most to them and is instead placing too much emphasis on social issues that they consider less urgent.
Asked to identify the Democratic Party’s most important priorities, Americans most often listed abortion, L.G.B.T.Q. rights and climate change, according to a poll from The New York Times and Ipsos conducted from Jan. 2 to 10.
The issues that people cited as most important to them personally were the economy and inflation, health care and immigration, the poll found. The kinds of social causes that progressive activists have championed in recent years ranked much lower.
As Democrats gather in Washington this weekend to elect the next chairman of their party, and debate how to most effectively counter the Trump administration, the latest public opinion surveys contain worrisome signs for them.
The country remains deeply divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership, with roughly equal shares of people saying that his second term is cause for celebration or concern.
But the poll suggests that people do not view the Democratic Party as an appealing alternative.
In a broad sense, the poll, which surveyed a representative sample of 2,128 adults nationwide, found that Americans think the Republican Party is more in sync with the mood of the country. The issues that people said mattered most to Republicans were also, for the most part, the issues that mattered to them: immigration, the economy, inflation and taxes.
Overall, voters view the Democratic Party more negatively than the Republican Party, according to a Quinnipiac University poll conducted the week after Mr. Trump took office. The 57 percent unfavorable rating for Democrats is the highest Quinnipiac has recorded for the party since it first started asking the question in 2008.
The results underscore the challenge facing Democrats as they attempt to rebuild their party after losing the White House and control of both chambers of Congress. Since the election, Democrats have been unable to agree even on the reasons behind their defeat.
While party officials broadly agree that Democrats should place greater emphasis on economic policy, there’s less consensus on how — or even whether — to address issues like transgender rights.
Views of both parties could shift as Mr. Trump moves forward with his agenda. Some of his administration’s highest profile actions do not have widespread support, such as eliminating diversity requirements in government and lashing out at Mr. Trump’s political opponents.
People who responded to the poll — including those who said they did not vote for Mr. Trump and do not consider themselves Republicans — described themselves in interviews as feeling alienated from Democrats.
Silver Arenas, a 27-year-old living in Mount Vernon, Wash., said he thinks that while many Americans are worried about the cost of living and the scarcity of affordable housing, the Democrats highlight policies that do not seem relevant.
A lot of the time, he said, Republicans seem to support policies that hurt people. When Democrats have bad ideas, as he sees it, “They’re not trying to hurt people, they’re just stupid.”
Mr. Arenas said he voted for Ms. Harris but would consider not voting at all if he doesn’t like the Democratic ticket in the future. “Democrats should have paid a lot more attention to the cost of living,” he added.
Muhammad Khan, 30, an accountant from Philadelphia, voted for Mr. Trump last year. He explained that as a Muslim, it was difficult to support the Democrats because of former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s support for Israel in its war against Hamas.
“They take people for granted,” he said of Democrats, “that they would vote for them no matter what.”
Mr. Khan remains optimistic about Mr. Trump and trusts Republicans more on the economy.
And while he said he believes Democrats are usually kinder than Republicans to marginalized groups, he thinks they have gone too far lately.
“Gender equality, gender pay, L.G.B.T. rights,” Mr. Khan said, ticking off the issues he thinks preoccupy Democrats. “I think it’s valuable,” he added, “but it’s too much.”
On lesbian, gay and transgender rights, people perceive the Democratic Party’s priorities as particularly misaligned with their own. Just 4 percent of Americans listed L.G.B.T.Q. issues as very important to them personally. But 31 percent said they were a Democratic Party priority.
The same percentage of people cited abortion as a top issue for the party, while 13 percent identified it as one of the top three concerns to them personally. Americans also identified climate change (25 percent) and the state of democracy (20 percent) as issues most important to Democrats.
Even self-identified Democrats were only somewhat more likely than other Americans to mention abortion and L.G.B.T.Q. issues as important to them personally. Democrats did not rank either among their top five concerns.
Most Democratic candidates, however, did not run campaigns in 2024 that were as focused on social issues as Americans seem to believe.
For the most part, Democrats, including former Vice President Kamala Harris, did not discuss gender identity. That came from Republicans, who fanned fears about transgender women playing on female sports teams and minors receiving transgender medical treatment.
But Democrats did not agree on a cohesive or effective way to respond.
“Politics is about perception,” said Adam Jentleson, a Democratic strategist who has urged his party to rethink how much influence it allows activist groups to have over its agenda. “And people perceive Democrats as being focused on the demands of activists instead of kitchen table issues.”
The question, he said, “is what do we do about it?”
“We can either whine about media coverage and complain that life isn’t fair,” Mr. Jentleson added. “Or we can get real about the realities of politics and actually fix the problem.”
Abortion stands out as an issue that Americans largely associate with the Democratic Party but that also has broad public support. Roughly two-thirds of American support some form of legal abortion access, according to Pew Research Center.
Economy and inflation were, by far, the issues that mattered most to Americans, the poll found. That was consistent across every demographic group.
“Democrats did not talk about inflation nearly enough” ahead of the election, said Dustin Johnson, 30, a software engineer in Elk River, Minn. And when they did talk about it, he added, Democrats made technical arguments about the slowing rate of inflation.
“Inflation is lower,” he said. “But what people are seeing with inflation is not the rate of increase, it’s where the inflation went.”
Mr. Johnson — who said that he voted for Ms. Harris and had previously supported Bernie Sanders and Andrew Yang — hopes the Democratic losses in November will push the party to focus on middle-income and working-class Americans.
For now, he said he fears that the party has become “an insiders club” that mostly ignores those voters. “So maybe I don’t want to identify as a Democrat,” he added. “Now I feel like more of an independent.”
Christine Zhang contributed.
How This Poll Was Conducted
Here are the key things to know about this poll from The New York Times and Ipsos:
-
The poll was conducted on the internet using a probability-based panel hosted by Ipsos, a company that conducts polls in the U.S. and abroad. You can see the exact questions that were asked and the order in which they were asked here.
-
The Ipsos panel was recruited by mailing invitations to a randomly selected group of Americans to ensure representative coverage of the entire United States. Americans were then selected out of that panel for this survey.
-
To further ensure that the results reflect the entire adult population, not just those willing to take a poll, more weight was given to respondents from demographic groups that are underrepresented among survey respondents, such as people without a college degree. See the methodology for more information about how the survey was weighted.
-
The margin of sampling error among all Americans is about plus or minus 2.6 percentage points. In theory, this means that the results should reflect the views of the overall population most of the time, though many other challenges create additional sources of error.
You can see full results and a detailed methodology here.