New Report Details What Went Wrong for Democrats in 2024

An extensive new analysis of surveys and focus groups compiled over the past year lays out a series of factors that it argues stand as the basis for former Vice President Kamala Harris’ and Democrats’ electoral failures in 2024.

The report, from the Democratic-aligned donor network and strategy hub Way to Win, outlines long-term trends and challenges that undermined the party’s performance in 2024. Rather than simply attributing Harris’ loss to a sudden right-ward lurch among voters, the analysis argues that simmering economic frustrations, a fractured Democratic coalition and right-wing investments in media shaped the contours of last year’s elections.

“The current DC establishment thinking is that Democrats’ problems stem from unreasonable leftist demands and lefty groups forcing Democrats to take unpopular positions,” the report reads. “We do not believe the evidence supports this set of beliefs.”

Here’s a look at what went wrong in 2024, according to Way to Win’s analysis:

Longterm Economic Pain Took Its Toll

It wasn’t just a sudden spike in the cost of living that fueled discontent among voters in 2024, the report argues. 

Rather, frustration over persistent inflation was compounded by years of rising economic inequality and a broad perception that the system isn’t working for most Americans.

“The context is important: it wasn’t just that prices suddenly increased, it was that this happened on top of decades of the affordability crisis that is a direct result of increasingly extreme right-wing ideas and governance: inequality, austerity, supply-side tax cuts, deregulation, predatory capitalism, risk shifted to individuals, and increased precarity,” the report reads.

As that sense of economic unease simmered among American voters, the report argues, neither the Harris campaign nor the broader Democratic Party were able to convince the electorate that they could make things better. 

The report notes that, while voters are broadly supportive of the kind of change that Democrats promise on so-called “kitchen-table issues,” they’re also “profoundly cynical about Democrats’ ability to deliver on these promises and create change.”

“If Dems and the Harris campaign thought their message was addressing this broader context, that effort did not effectively reach voters according to our post-elect voter listening,” Way to Win’s report says.

Right-Wing Media Paid Off for Republicans

The report also credits a robust right-wing media ecosystem – in tandem with an increasingly splintered media landscape – with shaping Americans’ views on key issues. 

By investing in long-term persuasion and marketing, the report argues, the political right effectively countered positive news about issues like violent crime, inflation and unauthorized border crossings, so much so that even Americans who aren’t awash in conservative media began echoing Republican talking points.

“Voters are awash in right-wing information and disinformation, and mainstream and corporate news is increasingly shaped by the right,” the report reads. “In focus groups, we often hear right-wing talking points seep into the conversation, even among participants who aren’t otherwise Trump/MAGA curious in any way.”

The Political Left Was Deeply Fractured

Unlike past elections that ended in Democratic victories, the 2024 cycle was marked by deep divisions between Democrats and “broader left movements” over high-profile issues, the report argues.

Exhibit A, according to the report, was the Biden administration’s handling of Israel’s war in Gaza. Simply put, “both movement activists and many ordinary voters were horrified by the Biden White House’s shockingly ineffective and callous approach to Gaza, combined with the equally shocking unwillingness of the party apparatus to even engage with reasonable critics.”

That ultimately dampened the enthusiasm and support of some of the Democratic Party’s most engaged and reliable supporters, according to Way to Win’s report. 

By contrast, it argues, frustration over the war in Iraq helped boost former President Barack Obama to the White House in 2008, while anger over the police killings of Black people helped unify progressive and left-aligned movements behind former President Joe Biden in 2020.

To be sure, the report also notes that Democrats can’t expect to win by simply mobilizing the political left alone. 

“We believe people across the entire universe of gettable voters need persuasion,” the report notes. “But having a base of supporters who will argue for your candidate does matter, particularly in the fragmented social media landscape.”