If there is one point of consensus in the deeply fractured Democratic Party, it’s that the old ways of doing business just aren’t cutting it.

And so, many of the party’s most analytically minded strategists have begun focusing their energies on dissecting the tactical and technical decisions that led to last year’s devastating defeats, and dreaming up proposals to overhaul the machinery of progressive politics.

This work is not about the big picture of what the party stands for. It is about the nuts and bolts of how to get candidates elected: which potential voters to target; whose doors to knock on, and whether door-knocking is still effective in a digital age; and when and where to advertise, whether online, on television or by mail.

There is also a concern that too many of those decisions have been made by party officials on high, relying too heavily on polling to guide their choices on policy positions, messaging and advertising, and ignoring other important signals that could help influence voters.

“We need to rethink things,” said Danielle Butterfield, executive director of Priorities USA, which was once the party’s premiere super PAC and spent $45 million, including its nonprofit arms, in the 2024 election. “The same elitism that is abundant in our party exists in the way we make decisions.”

Priorities USA is spending $8 million on three pilot programs this year to explore some of the surprise findings from 2024. One such finding was that some of the Democratic group’s most effective ads turned out to be those that ran on YouTube channels favored by Republican voters who were seen as unpersuadable.