Voters See Democrats as “Preachy” “Judgmental” and “Focused on Culture Wars”

Editorial Staff - February 17, 2022

Through their own research Democrats’ show that some battleground voters think the party is “preachy,” “judgmental” and “focused on culture wars,” according to documents obtained by POLITICO.

And the party’s House campaign arm had a stark warning for Democrats: Unless they more forcefully confront the GOP’s “alarmingly potent” culture war attacks, from critical race theory to defunding the police, they risk losing significant ground to Republicans in the midterm elections in November just 8.5 months away.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is recommending a new strategy to the endangered members and their teams, with hopes to ward off the kinds of GOP attacks that nearly erased their majority last election and remain a huge risk ahead of November.

In presentations over the past two weeks, party officials and operatives used polling and focus group findings to argue Democrats can’t simply ignore the attacks any longer which seem to be putting them at a distinct disadvantage.

A generic ballot of swing districts from late January showed Democrats trailing Republicans by 4 points, according to the polling.

It wasn’t all bleak, though: The data showed that Democrats could mostly regain the ground lost to Republicans if they offered a strong rebuttal to the political hits being offered up by their Republican opponents. Some of the biggest concerns are of course “defund the police” attack, for instance, the presenters encouraged Democrats to reiterate their support for police. Let's also not forget about the immigration invasion along our southern border, they said Democrats should deny support for “open borders or amnesty,” and talk about their efforts to keep the border safe.

If Democrats don’t answer Republican hits, the party operatives warned, the GOP’s lead on the generic ballot balloons to 14 points from 4 points — a dismal prediction for Democrats when the GOP only needs to win five seats to seize back the majority in the House of Representatives. But when voters heard a Democratic response to that hit, Republicans’ edge narrowed back down to 6 points, giving candidates more of a fighting chance, especially since those numbers don’t factor in Democrats going on the offensive.

Many Democrats, led by DCCC chief Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), have pushed to more forcefully counter the GOP’s attacks since the last election. But that message has picked up new urgency as President Joe Biden’s approval has tanked in recent weeks, stoking more party anxiety based on the President's falling numbers across the board. The internal presentation underscored some of those anxieties: The GOP hits are most effective with center-left voters, the independents and Hispanic voters, demographic groups that Democrats have struggled to attract in recent years.

The solution does not lie in policy proposals, the pollsters found, because voters are not generally opposed to Democratic policies. “Rather, Democrats need to demonstrate they fully understand and care about stressors in people’s lives” and focus on the issues “without stoking divisive cultural debates,” one of the slides said.

Summarizing the party’s midterm problems bluntly, the presentation notes that voters think Democrats “are not making good use of their majority.” For many swing-district Democrats, it’s a grim affirmation and that they have sounded the alarm about the Republicans’ culture war attacks since before the last election as they watched the GOP unleash increasingly brutal ads that often contained the alleged misinformation touted by the biased media. Not all Democrats addressed it head on, unsure how to respond to the believed distortions.

This cycle, however, Democratic officials are working to arm their incumbents with what they believe are the most solid defense to the Republican attacks. Rather than delivering a counterpunch or pivoting away from the issue, Democrats are urged to “correct the record” because “changing the subject risks confirming suspicions" and rightfully so.

Democratic officials clarified they are not trying to offer a specific rebuttal for the most potent issues in each district. Instead, they said the best response is one that is authentic to each member, and each race.

And Maloney has been upfront about the historic headwinds facing his party in 2022. During the summer, his team put forth polling that showed Democrats trailing by 6 points on the generic ballot, and urged members to better tout Biden’s agenda which isn't fairing all to well on its own by the way.

This latest round of polling, commissioned by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, was conducted via an online panel of 1,000 likely general election voters in battleground districts from Jan. 26-30. The margin of error was 3.1 percent. The project included additional interviews with Hispanic, Black and Asian American and Pacific Islander voters.

The polling was conducted by Global Strategy Group, Impact Research, HIT Strategies and BSP Research on behalf of the DCCC.

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