Democrats are a sinking ship without a captain
The Democrat Party is a sinking ship without a captain. They’re “deeply fractured, rudderless, and struggling to figure out at the most basic level what their message and strategy should be.”
POLITICO compared national polling from 2017 to now, and it’s a different ballgame:
- President Trump is more popular now than at any point in his first term. His approval is at 48.1%, compared to 42.1% in March 2017.
- Republican voters are energized and unified. They have a much higher opinion of their members of Congress compared to Democrats.
- Democrats’ attacks on Trump aren’t working the way they did in 2018, and voters aren’t turning away from him like they did in his first term.
- Democrats’ popularity is collapsing, and their positive rating dropped from 39% to 27% in just a few months.
- Massive internal divisions. Polling and reports show deep fractures between Democratic leadership and the grassroots base.
- Democratic voter enthusiasm is cratering. Quinnipiac polling shows Democratic anger at their own party is at a historic high.
- Their 2018 strategy isn’t working. Democrats are trying to replicate their anti-Trump playbook, but Trump is stronger, and voters aren’t responding the same way.
“The numbers don’t lie: The Democrat Party is a shining ship without a captain — adrift, broken, and taking on water faster than they can bail it out.” — NRCC Spokesman Mike Marinella
Read more from POLITICO here or see excerpts below.
Trump’s Popularity Could Be A Thorn For Democrats
POLITICO Morning Score
Andrew Howard
March 28, 2025
[…]
Democrats have celebrated recent wins in special elections in recent weeks, shown off impressive fundraising totals in tough-to-win races, and continued their onslaught against President Donald Trump and his billionaire ally, Elon Musk.
It’s a plan that looks a lot like 2017, attempting to benefit from Trump’s unpopularity. It worked at the time: Democrats flipped 41 House seats in the 2018 midterms (though they lost ground in the Senate). It’s no secret that Democrats are hoping to pull off something similar in the coming midterms.
But this time around, Trump is more popular than he was in his first term, even if he’s still slightly unpopular overall, according to the RealClearPolitics average, which shows Trump’s job approval at 48.1 percent. Compare that to his first term, where his approval was at 42.1 percent on March 28, 2017.
Political data experts are taking notice, too.
“I think sometimes it’s important to do a little bit of a reality check and take a little different spin at the numbers,” CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten said on a recent broadcast. “Because all we talk about is how unpopular Donald Trump is, but in reality, he’s basically more popular than he was at any point in term number one and more popular than he was when he won election back in November of 2024.”
The flip side of that is that Democratic Party is also much less popular than it was in Trump’s first term. It points to signs that Democrats’ messaging — or at times lackthereof — isn’t making inroads with voters. According to a recent NBC News poll, 39 percent of voters viewed the GOP positively, a number that’s hardly changed compared to September of last year. Meanwhile, voters’ opinion of Democrats changed significantly. In a September version of the same poll, 39 percent had a positive view of the party. Now, that number has dropped to 27 percent.
And as POLITICO Magazine reported last week, Quinnipiac University polling showed that Republicans have a much higher view of their party’s members of Congress, and the “intensity of the anger roiling the (Democratic) party is at a historic level.”
That, as Split Ticket founder Lakshya Jain wrote, suggests “a breach between congressional Democrats and the party grassroots so severe that it could reshape the 2026 primary election season.”
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