Democrats have been eager to draw tactical lessons from their second loss to Donald Trump, but they’ve so far been more reluctant to reconsider some of the fundamental assumptions about the broader political landscape that has guided their strategy.
The party has been slow to update its mythology to the Trump-era political realignment, leading many Democrats to continue leaning on truisms that may no longer be true.
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As the final votes are still being counted, it will take some time for the full story of the election to become clear. But exit polls and results from key areas around the country have already revealed new realities that Democrats will need to adjust to as they rebuild for the future.
Here are five of the party’s core assumptions that have been challenged by the 2024 election outcome:
1. Higher turnout benefits Democrats: Democrats have long taken for granted a simple truism: The more people who vote, the better for Democrats. That may have been true once — though that is also unclear — and it’s a feel-good story for a party that aligns itself with democracy.
But in the Trump era, Democrats have become the party of more reliable voters (college-educated, higher-income and older voters), while Republicans often stand to gain by turning out low-propensity voters (non-college-educated and blue-collar voters) who are mostly apolitical but like Trump.
That dynamic helps why Democrats have performed better in recent midterm, off-year and special elections and why polls have consistently underestimated Trump’s support. Non-presidential elections have lower turnout, so the edge often goes to the party with the most reliable voters, which until recently was typically Republicans.
2. Democrats are the party of the working class: For more than a century, Democrats have viewed themselves as the party of workers and the GOP as the party of the bosses. Strongly aligned with labor unions, Democrats have supported welfare programs and populist economic politics like higher taxes on the wealthy.
In 2024, Democrats lost the working class by the two most common measures — income and education levels. NBC News exit polls show Trump won voters without college degrees 56%-42%, while he narrowly won voters with family incomes of $30,000 to $100,000 annually. Kamala Harriswon voters with annual incomes over $200,000.
That’s a reversal from the previous elections. Even as she lost the 2016 election to Trump, Hillary Clinton still won low-income voters by double-digit margins and kept the education gap close, while Barack Obama easily won non-college-educated voters in 2012, according to NBC News exit polls.
3. Trump can’t expand his base: This is one reason why some Democrats viewed Trump as beatable, especially after his 2020 defeat.But on his third run for the White House, Trump expanded his base of support into major cities, onto Native American reservations and into heavily Latino communities.
He gained ground in battleground state cities like Philadelphia and Detroit, while improving his performance in even famously liberal areas like Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles County and Chicago’s Cook County. And he regained ground in affluent suburbs that had drifted away from the GOP in recent years, such as Loudoun County, Virginia.
4. Latinos and immigrants will vote against restrictive immigration policies: Democrats have based their Latino outreach and immigration policies around this implicitly accepted assumption.
But Trump had the best-ever performance for a Republican presidential candidate among Latinos, according to NBC News exit polls, outright winning Latino men, while increasing support among Asian Americans and in immigrant communities from Dearborn, Michigan to Lawrence, Massachusetts.
Trump nearly swept the heavily Latino counties in Texas along the border with Mexico, several of which have voted Democratic for generations. And the only Manhattan precinct to go for a Republican presidential candidate this decade is an apartment complex that's home mainly to Chinese immigrants.
5. The Electoral College is biased against Democrats: Until this month, both Republicans elected president in the 21st Century lost the popular vote, leading many Democrats to conclude the Electoral College is structurally biased against them.
The idea has some merit, as big blue states like California and New York are unrepresented relative to low-population red ones like Wyoming. But Trump won both the Electoral College and popular vote this year as Harris' performance fell in those Democratic bastions.
