Democrats are facing an identity crisis driven by the fact that despite the Democratic Party, the mainstream media, Hollywood, and Wall Street colluding to stop President Donald Trump from being elected a second time, the people elected him in a decisive victory for Republicans in 2024.
Now the party faces a PR crisis – Congressional Democrats hold a meager lead in the latest generic Congressional ballot surveys and credibility for the Democratic brand is at a record low, including among members of their own party and independent, moderate, and swing voters.
An alarming poll from Democratic-leaning research group Navigator Research quietly circulated among Democrats this spring, underscoring just how much the party’s support among middle-class voters has shrunk due to a mismatch in priorities.
The poll, shared with Politico, found that Congressional Democrats are suffering an image crisis in battleground House districts due to perceptions that the party does not prioritize the middle class and is focused on political correctness.
According to the Navigator poll, which polled voters in 62 competitive House districts across the country, voters say by 23 points – 54 percent to 31 percent – that Democrats in Congress are more focused on helping other groups than “people like me”.
This sentiment is particularly concerning among independent voters, a group Democrats will need to court heavily in competitive swing districts in the 2026 midterms. Independents say by a full 39 percentage points – 55 percent to 16 percent – that Congressional Democrats are not focused on helping people like them.
One of the most chilling takeaways from the survey for Democrats is that voters largely believe Democrats do not respect the working class or even value work itself. The data shows a mere 38 percent of voters say Democrat policies are focused on helping the middle and working classes.
Voters in swing districts say by fourteen points – 56 percent to 42 percent – that the Democratic Party is not looking out for working people. Less than half of voters – 44 percent – believe the Democratic Party “respects” work and even less – 39 percent – say the party “values” work.
While ignoring the border crisis and outright undermining the economic needs of the middle class, Democrats have attempted to insert themselves into other areas of life, running a largely unsuccessful campaign to normalize men in women’s sports and transgender issues being elevated in children’s spaces, while focusing heavily on identity politics and sewing racial division.
Instead of this radical leftwing strategy resulting in the successful installation of Former Vice President Kamala Harris into the White House, Democrats succeeded in handing President Donald Trump a second term with the help of a great many swing voters and moderates who chose to skew toward the right.
Now, looking ahead at the 2026 midterms, voters still see the Democratic Party as focused on the wrong issues, holding little regard for working individuals, and over-focusing on political correctness.
The Navigator poll found that by a whopping 42 percentage points – 69 percent to 27 percent – Americans in swing districts say Democrats are too focused on political correctness. By nine percentage points – 51 percent to 42 percent – voters say Democrats are elitist.
Democrats are facing a credibility crisis due to the party’s grave miscalculation that they could remain relevant while abandoning working-class priorities and elevating fringe social issues that play well among a sliver of elites but fall flat among the majority of Americans.
Some Democrat strategists are admitting as much and calling for the party to face its flaws. Speaking about the Democratic Party’s fixation on fringe issues, Jonathan Knott, former advisor to former Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia recently told Politico: “I think people are realizing that there were many reasons we lost in 2024, but an acquiescence to all of the liberal groups and fighting and dying on hills about 1 and 2 and 3 percent of the voting population seemed really dumb.”
Democrats may attempt to repackage themselves into a more moderate party to court swing voters and moderates in 2026, but the damage may have already been done.
Congressional Democrats are currently sitting at a record low of just 25 points in terms of public confidence according to the latest Gallup survey from April 1-14. This clocks in a full nine percentage points below the party’s previous record low of 34 percent, recorded in 2023. Democrats’ current confidence rating is a full twenty percentage points below the party’s average confidence rating of 45 percent over the past two-and-a-half decades.
What is more, Congressional Democrats lead Republicans by far fewer points in generic Congressional ballot polls than they have in other historic midterm election cycles where Democrats won sweeping victories in the House with a Republican in the White House.
The latest generic congressional ballot data has Democrats ahead by just 1.9 percentage points, 45.5 percent to 43.6 percent. Generic congressional ballot data from 2017 leading up to the 2018 midterms had Democrats ahead by 8.2 percentage points, and Democrats were leading by 7.3 percentage points in 2005, leading up to the 2006 midterm elections.
The Democratic Party’s relentless fixation on race, gender, and identity politics while neglecting issues like the porous southern border and exploitative global trade practices has become exhausting and inexcusable, and that exhaustion is being borne out in public opinion surveys.
Whether Democrats will be able to recover from their collapse in public trust in the next election cycle remains to be seen, but as long as the party takes a passive or outright combative approach to middle-class priorities, regaining a solid base of support from moderates and independents is highly unlikely.
Manzanita Miller is the senior political analyst at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
