Many working-class Americans who previously voted Democratic are expressing skepticism about the party being able to regain their vote in future elections, the New York Times (NYT) reported Tuesday.
Several working-class interviewees told the NYT that they struggled with their decisions to vote for former President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. The report comes as Democrats attempt to persuade voters to embrace their ideas ahead of the upcoming midterms and 2028 White House election.
“I think I’m done with the Democrats,” Desmond Smith, a black man who voted for Biden in 2020, told the NYT. Smith told the outlet that he voted for President Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
When asked how the Democratic Party could win his vote back, Smith told the NYT that Democrats need to “fight for Americans instead of fighting for everybody else.”
“It seemed like they [Democrats] were more concerned with [diversity, equity and inclusion] DEI and LGBTQ issues and really just things that didn’t pertain to me or concern me at all,” Kendall Wood, a truck driver from Virginia, told the NYT. Wood told the NYT that he voted for Trump in 2024 after backing Biden in 2020.
“They weren’t concerned with, really, kitchen-table issues,” he added.
“Maybe talk about real-world problems,” Maya Garcia, a restaurant server from California, told the NYT. Garcia told the outlet she voted for Biden in the 2020 presidential election but did not vote in the 2024 presidential election.
Garcia said that Democrats talk “a lot about us emotionally, but what are we going to do financially?” She added, “I understand that you want, you know, equal rights and things like that. But I feel like we need to talk more about the economics.”
Kyle Bielski, of Arizona, told the NYT that he connected with Trump’s “America First” messaging in the 2024 election cycle. Still, Bielski told the outlet that he does not feel like the president is meeting expectations on his “America First” promises.
“We’re getting into more stuff abroad and not really focusing on economics here,” he told the NYT. “It doesn’t seem like he’s holding true to anything that he’s promised.”
Meanwhile, John Anzalone, a Democratic pollster, told the NYT that Democrats “are doing nothing to move their own numbers because they don’t have an economic message.”
“They [Democrats] think that this is about Trump’s numbers getting worse,” Anzalone added. “They need to worry about their numbers.”
Some Democrats have recently called for their party to stay away from left-wing messaging and return to more center-left politics following the GOP’s victories in 2024. Additionally, various polls have shown that the Democratic Party has lost popularity with voters in 2025.
Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Ken Martin said in February that Americans now see the GOP as the “party of the working class” while the Democratic Party is viewed as the “party of the elites.”
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