WASHINGTON — Two of the nation’s most outstanding political pollsters — a Republican and a Democrat — got here to just about the identical conclusion for Democrats after final month’s election handed Republicans management of the White Home and each chambers of Congress.
“My advice — other than find a moderate voice, which is where America is — is define where you can work in a bipartisan manner in the next two years to get things done, because America is looking for that,” stated John Anzalone, a founding accomplice of Influence Analysis and a prime pollster for Vice President Kamala Harris’ marketing campaign.
“You can’t just be the resistance,” he stated. “Be the voice against crazy and injustice and unfairness. But go in there and find places that you can work with Republicans to get things done.”
Requested what recommendation he would give Democrats, Tony Fabrizio of Fabrizio Ward, President-elect Donald Trump’s chief pollster, stated: “Stop being prisoners to your own special interests.
“They’re more worried about their base and honestly they went too far,” Fabrizio instructed a reporter roundtable organized by the AARP. (Fabrizio emphasised that he was talking as a pollster for the curiosity group for older People and never for the Trump marketing campaign.) “One of the reasons why the ad we did about the trans thing worked was the tagline: Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”
Fabrizio was referencing what was broadly thought of certainly one of the best but polarizing adverts of the 2024 election, which seized on a clip through which Harris expressed help for taxpayer-funded transgender surgical procedure for jail inmates. Anzalone and Fabrizio agreed the footage, from Harris’ 2019 marketing campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, was a present to Republicans and Trump.
“We’ve gotten to a point in society where if you disagree with something like that, you’re the extremist, you’re out of the mainstream,” Fabrizio stated. “And in my opinion Democrats, particularly Democrats in D.C., are very much captive of that political correctness that the rest of the country just doesn’t get. And actually it’s off-putting to the rest of the country.”
Each pollsters agreed the economic system was the driving issue on this yr’s election — and that Trump crafted a extra compelling financial message to woo undecided voters.
“Watching every TV ad in every battleground state, I think [the Trump campaign] did a brilliant job of the economic narrative on the cost of living,” Anzalone stated.
The occasion is split on the place Harris in the end fell quick on Election Day, ensuing within the lack of each swing state and the nationwide well-liked vote — a primary for the occasion since 2004. Democrats together with Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont imagine the occasion additional deserted a jilted working class, whereas others downplayed the general diploma of its losses.
Anzalone and Fabrizio additionally agreed that, regardless of an early surge following Harris’ alternative of President Joe Biden on the prime of the ticket, the Trump marketing campaign did a greater job defining Harris utilizing principally her personal phrases.
“I think the sugar high never put into the equation the pushback that … when she ran in 2019, she was the most liberal candidate of what, 17 candidates? That’s not a criticism, that’s just where she was. And those interviews came back,” Anzalone stated.
And but, Anzalone — Biden’s longtime pollster — stated Democratic losses would have been much more devastating had Biden remained the nominee.
“I’m a Biden guy. I’ve been working for him since I was 22. I love the man,” he stated. “But if Joe Biden was the nominee, I think we lose [Michigan Sen.-elect] Elissa Slotkin. I think we lose [Wisconsin Sen. Tammy] Baldwin. I think we lose [Nevada Sen. Jacky] Rosen. … I actually think we probably would have lost Arizona [in the U.S.] Senate.”
The political local weather, nevertheless, can shift dramatically over the following two years, giving Democrats a gap.
Democracy In The Stability
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“America is kind of pissed off right now,” Anzalone stated. “Don’t think they’re joyous about Republicans. They were just a little less joyous about Democrats … this was still a lesser of two evils election.”
