'They're Not Doing Enough': Poll Reveals Deep Dissatisfaction With Democratic Party

Polling released Wednesday by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows Democratic voters are cynical about the state of politics in the United States and how leaders are chosen under the political system, and they are increasingly pessimistic about their party's future.

The poll—conducted earlier this month, six months after President Donald Trump won a second term and Republicans narrowly claimed both chambers of Congress—found that 55% of Democrats are pessimistic about how political leaders are selected. Seventy-three percent said the same about the state of politics in the country.

Additionally, 36% of Democrats are pessimistic about the future of the party, compared with 35% who are optimistic and 29% who said they are neither. That's a major shift from July 2024, when just 26% were pessimistic, 57% were optimistic, and 16% were neither.

"I'm not real high on Democrats right now," said poll respondent Damien Williams, a 48-year-old Democrat from Cahokia Heights, Illinois and a member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union, which notably did not endorse in the 2024 presidential contest. "To me, they're not doing enough to push back against Trump."

Williams told The Associated Press that he likely won't feel good about the Democratic Party again "until somebody steps up in terms of being a leader that can bring positive change—an Obama-like figure."

The poll also asked all 1,175 respondents—including Independents and Republicans—about a few political leaders affiliated with the party: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.); Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who caucuses with Democrats and sought their presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020; and progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).

A plurality of all voters (43%) have an unfavorable view of Schumer, with 36% not knowing enough to say, and just 21% viewing him favorably. Among Democrats, 31% see him negatively, 34% don't know enough, and 35% have a positive opinion.

Schumer has come under fire for his response to the Trump administration and Republican control of Congress—particularly his March decision to help advance the GOP's stopgap funding bill, which led to calls for his resignation and for Ocasio-Cortez to launch a primary challenge against him for the 2028 cycle.

Across party lines, only 29% of respondents have a favorable view of Ocasio-Cortez, but that jumps to 55% among Democrats. While 65% of Republicans have an unfavorable view of the "Squad" member, 50% of Independents don't know enough.

Sanders—who has been traveling the country for his Fighting Oligarchy Tour, with appearances from House progressives including Ocasio-Cortez—has the highest favorability of the three. The full survey class was split: 43% favorable, 40% unfavorable, and 16% unsure. While 72% of Republicans have an unfavorable view, Independents were divided in thirds across the three categories, and 75% of Democrats have a positive view of the senator, with only 13% seeing him negatively and 12% unsure.

Sanders on Wednesday released a video from recent Fighting Oligarchy stops in which Pennsylvania residents shared critiques that align with the poll results. A man named Matthew Bennet said, "I'm not happy with the state of the Democratic Party. We need to return the Democratic Party to its roots, unbeholden [to] the corporate interests and the megadonors and the oligarchs."

Leading up to the November election, officials across the Democratic Party's ideological spectrum worked to reelect then-President Joe Biden, who was ultimately replaced as the nominee by then-Vice President Kamala Harris after a disastrous debate performance raised concerns about his fitness for another term.

Writing about Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's new book, Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, for The Nation on Tuesday, Norman Solomon noted:

Partisan denial transcended ideology. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were outspoken in favor of Biden's reelection effort until he withdrew from the race. Progressive legislators were no better than their centrist colleagues in resisting pressure from the Biden White House to pretend that the president was fit to run again, while the Democratic Party's power structure insisted on a position opposed by a sizable majority of the party's voters.

[...]

The operative mentality of Democratic Party leaders is not much different now than it was during the protracted cover-up of Biden's cognitive decline. Today, like a political ghost, Joe Biden haunts the party, with leadership that prefers hagiography to candor.

Since the election, polling has shown that registered Democrats and Independent voters who lean Democratic are frustrated with the party, see no clear leader of it, and want to see elected officials fight harder for working people—and elected progressives, including Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, have been more critical of the party.

In November, Sanders said that "it should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working-class people would find that the working class has abandoned them," and predicted that "the big money interests and well-paid consultants" who control the party probably wouldn't "learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign."

Sanders' comments were met with swift backlash from then-Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison, who called his take "straight up BS." Six months later, as Wednesday's survey results make clear, voters aren't happy with the party.

"I just feel like the majority of the old Democratic Party needs to go," Democrat Monica Brown, a 61-year-old social worker from Knoxville, Tennessee, told the AP. "They're not in tune with the new generation. They're not in tune with the new world. We've got such division within the party."

That division was on full display last December, when Ocasio-Cortez ran for ranking member of U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, but lost to Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.)—a 75-year-old soon leaving the post due to his battle with cancer.

Ocasio-Cortez left the panel, and the 35-year-old confirmed last week that she will not return to seek the leadership role, telling reporters, "It's actually clear to me that the underlying dynamics in the caucus have not shifted with respect to seniority as much as I think would be necessary, so I believe I'll be staying put at Energy and Commerce."

On that committee, Ocasio-Cortez called out Republican members early Wednesday for rushing ahead with their proposal to cut Medicaid "at 2:38 in the morning, when everyone is asleep, when we've asked for the opportunity to do this in the light of day so that people can call their representatives' offices in order to stop this disaster."

While there was a clear age gap with Ocasio-Cortez and Connolly, people of various generations fall into the Democratic Party's different factions. For example, 48-year-old Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) was sharply criticized for suggesting last month that Americans don't know what oligarchy means, so Democrats should stop saying it—as 83-year-old Sanders' tour centered on that term has drawn more than 250,000 people across several states.

Last week, 42-year-old Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) said he refuses to hold town halls because of Indivisible, a grassroots movement "with a mission to elect progressive leaders, rebuild our democracy, and defeat the Trump agenda."

Both Indivisible and Sanders are now working to mobilize voters nationwide against Republicans' emerging reconciliation package that would provide tax giveaways to wealthy individuals and corporations by gutting programs like Medicaid that serve the working class and raising the national debt they so often complain about by trillions of dollars over the next decade.

"If Trump's 'big, beautiful' reconciliation bill goes through, 13.7 million people will lose their health insurance and even more will become underinsured," Sanders warned Tuesday. "Make no mistake, thousands of low-income and working-class Americans will die unnecessarily if it passes. We must not allow it."