WASHINGTON — Two of the country’s most prominent political pollsters — a Republican and a Democrat — came to virtually the same conclusion for Democrats after last month’s election handed Republicans control of the White House and both chambers of Congress.
“My advice — other than find a moderate voice, which is where America is — is define where you can work in a bipartisan manner in the next two years to get things done, because America is looking for that,” said John Anzalone, a founding partner of Impact Research and a top pollster for Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign.
“You can’t just be the resistance,” he said. “Be the voice against crazy and injustice and unfairness. But go in there and find places that you can work with Republicans to get things done.”
Asked what advice he would give Democrats, Tony Fabrizio of Fabrizio Ward, President-elect Donald Trump’s chief pollster, said: “Stop being prisoners to your own special interests.
“They’re more worried about their base and honestly they went too far,” Fabrizio told a reporter roundtable organized by the AARP. (Fabrizio emphasized that he was speaking as a pollster for the interest group for older Americans and not for the Trump campaign.) “One of the reasons why the ad we did about the trans thing worked was the tagline: Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”
Fabrizio was referencing what was widely considered one of the most effective yet polarizing ads of the 2024 election, which seized on a clip in which Harris expressed support for taxpayer-funded transgender surgery for prison inmates. Anzalone and Fabrizio agreed the footage, from Harris’ 2019 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, was a gift to Republicans and Trump.
“We’ve gotten to a point in society where if you disagree with something like that, you’re the extremist, you’re out of the mainstream,” Fabrizio said. “And in my opinion Democrats, particularly Democrats in D.C., are very much captive of that political correctness that the rest of the country just doesn’t get. And actually it’s off-putting to the rest of the country.”
Both pollsters agreed the economy was the driving factor in this year’s election — and that Trump crafted a more compelling economic message to woo undecided voters.
“Watching every TV ad in every battleground state, I think [the Trump campaign] did a brilliant job of the economic narrative on the cost of living,” Anzalone said.
The party is divided on where Harris ultimately fell short on Election Day, resulting in the loss of every swing state and the national popular vote — a first for the party since 2004. Democrats including Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont believe the party further abandoned a jilted working class, while others downplayed the overall degree of its losses.
Anzalone and Fabrizio also agreed that, despite an early surge following Harris’ replacement of President Joe Biden at the top of the ticket, the Trump campaign did a better job defining Harris using mostly her own words.
“I think the sugar high never put into the equation the pushback that ... when she ran in 2019, she was the most liberal candidate of what, 17 candidates? That’s not a criticism, that’s just where she was. And those interviews came back,” Anzalone said.
And yet, Anzalone — Biden’s longtime pollster — said Democratic losses would have been far more devastating had Biden remained the nominee.
“I’m a Biden guy. I’ve been working for him since I was 22. I love the man,” he said. “But if Joe Biden was the nominee, I think we lose [Michigan Sen.-elect] Elissa Slotkin. I think we lose [Wisconsin Sen. Tammy] Baldwin. I think we lose [Nevada Sen. Jacky] Rosen. … I actually think we probably would have lost Arizona [in the U.S.] Senate.”
The political climate, however, can shift dramatically over the next two years, giving Democrats an opening.
Democracy In The Balance
Already contributed? Log in to hide these messages.
“America is kind of pissed off right now,” Anzalone said. “Don’t think they’re joyous about Republicans. They were just a little less joyous about Democrats … this was still a lesser of two evils election.”