Democrats are rethinking ways to recapture voters they've lost to President Trump in recent election cycles, and they may have been offered an important lesson in the New York mayoral primary.
In various post-mortems and focus groups done on the heels of their devastating 2024 election loss, Democrats have thoroughly examined exit polls and voter demographics in search of the gaps in their party’s appeal.
But Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha, who served as a senior adviser on Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) presidential campaign in 2020, said Democrats are “overthinking” the solution by analyzing the voters who flipped sides or skipped voting during the last election.
“It’s more simple than that,” Rocha said. “Just concentrate on people who are frustrated as hell and get both of them.”
Rocha pointed to the New York mayoral race as proof. He says progressive upstart-turned-party nominee Zohran Mamdani (D) was able to capture voters — including those who did not vote a few months ago in the presidential election — by talking about affordability and other tangible economic issues that appealed to them.
Rocha said voters “want anything that’s different” from the status quo when it comes to the cost of living.
“It shows how desperate people are,” he said.
While many Democrats disagree with Mamdani's politics, they say the campaign he ran shows the unwavering preeminence of economic issues. And Trump taught the same lesson in 2024, political observers say, by telling voters what they wanted to hear on the economy and his message on “draining the swamp.”
“Donald Trump and Zohran Mamdani just showed, in very different elections, that economic issues are still king — and that you can appeal to a wide, bipartisan swath of voters by saying you'll bring down the cost of living,” said Democratic strategist Christy Setzer. “Working-class voters have been drifting away from the Democratic Party on so-called ‘cultural’ issues for a long time, but they're still very gettable through a clear message and from a compelling messenger.”
According to exit polls, Democrats in 2024 lost significant ground with middle-class voters, a cornerstone of their traditional base, down 10 percentage points from 2020. At the same time, there is a decreasing sense of strong party leadership and little optimism about the party’s future, respective CNN/SSRS and AP/NORC polling out in May revealed.
But Mamdani, a self-proclaimed democratic socialist, took aim at the Democratic establishment, calling for draining the swamp to make room for change. It was an echo of Trump’s messaging in his 2024 campaign.
“Donald Trump was successful because … he wasn't afraid to be against and call out people in his own party and other parties,” said Susan Del Percio, a longtime New York-based Republican strategist who does not support Trump. “Mamdani was the exact same. He was calling out everybody, and then that's when you get to act with no fear.”
Mamandi strayed from the Democratic establishment with a clear message of affordability and came out on top in a crowded and competitive primary. Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Mamdani’s only serious competition, ran on a message of protecting New York City from Trump.
But the New York City electorate is drastically different from the rest of the country, political observers say, noting someone like Mamdani may not appeal to moderates and centrists.
“Being a self-proclaimed democratic socialist … doesn't play in swing districts. It plays in New York City primaries,” Del Percio said. “The Democratic candidates have to look more like Elissa Slotkin talking about the cost of living than they do Mamdani talking about the cost of living.”
Realizing they need to do more to appeal to the middle class, Democrats across the country have begun to put forward plans and back legislation to regain lost ground.
Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) recently came out with her “Economic War Plan,” the goals of which, she has said, are to reconnect the Democratic Party with the middle class.
At the same time, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) signed a bill this week overhauling California's environmental protection laws to accelerate much-needed housing construction in the state. In the name of bringing down the cost of living, Newsom’s move goes against a history of California Democrats unconditionally defending the state’s environmental protection laws.
But the New York race gave some Democrats an injection of hope that their party was starting to turn things around after the crushing loss last year.
“We have proof now, and the proof is the NYC mayor's race,” Rocha said. Mamdani won “the same precincts in New York City where Donald Trump overperformed in the general election,” he explained.
Democratic strategist Jamal Simmons said while not every voter is gettable, “a lot of them are,” and he said some of the people who supported Trump are Democrats who simply found Trump’s message more compelling than the Democratic ticket in the 2024 race.
“Voters are not captive to any political party,” Simmons added. “They have agency. They get to make their own choices, and if politicians aren't speaking to them, they'll look elsewhere.”
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