Left-Leaning Pollster: Democrats, We Have A Problem

Tim MeadsDecember 2, 2021

After Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin capped off an upset victory over Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe in Virginia’s gubernatorial race last month, left-leaning pollster Brian Stryker decided to get to the bottom of why the Democratic party failed so miserably across the board in Virginia.

Stryker and his colleague Oren Savir conducted focus groups among “suburban [Northern Virginia] and Richmond Voters” to understand why they voted for the GOP candidate.

As a result, the pair released a memo that found the Democratic party is in big trouble across the board on nearly every issue and messaging tactic.

Stryker sat down with The New York Times to discuss his memo and gave some insight into what he thinks the party needs to do going forward.

When asked by The New York Times what he would say to a Democratic client running in 2022, Stryker responded, “I would tell them that we have a problem. We’ve got a national branding problem that is probably deeper than a lot of people suspect. Our party thinks maybe some things we’re saying aren’t cutting through, but I think it’s much deeper than that.”

To that extent, Stryker’s memo found that nationally the Democratic Party had four big issues stemming from their messaging woes:

1. Our weak national brand left us vulnerable.

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2. Voters are unhappy with the direction of the country and don’t think we get it.

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3. Voters believe the economy is bad, and no amount of stats can change their mind (at least in the short term).

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4. Voters think we are focused on social issues, not the economy.

Stryker’s interview with The New York Times contained some amusing tidbits. For example, Striker said that voters don’t have the capacity to remember the good that Democrats have done, like the last $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan passed in March:

Interviewer: I want to cite a few things from your memo that struck me, one of which was that the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which became law in March, may as well not exist.

Stryker: Voters don’t remember things. They have short attention spans. One bright spot, though: If we have an economy that voters feel like is starting to pick up, being able to point back and remind them, “Hey I did XYZ, and that really got things rolling.”

Likewise, Stryker also contradicted himself and — perhaps because he is a Democrat — failed to make the connection between President Joe Biden’s policies, like the American Rescue Plan, and soaring inflation.

The New York Times asked, “So you think Democrats next year should spend the bulk of their time trumpeting their legislative accomplishments from this year?

Stryker responded, “We should spend 2022 talking about things we’ve done to lower costs for working families and to get people back to work. Some of those things may be in a piece of legislation; others are things the White House did. Some are constituent services.”

What have they done? Stryker did not expound on that.

When The New York Times seemed surprised that voters did not believe Democrats were doing anything to address the issue, Stryker said “[Voters] just see costs going up and don’t feel like there’s any progress being made yet.”

Of course, if the policies enacted by Democrats have failed to stop prices from rising, then how would leftist candidates run positively on the things they’ve done to lower costs in 2022?

Stryker again did not really get into specifics, but he did acknowledge that Americans have a careful eye on the price of everyday goods:

Interviewer: How much of [the feeling that progress isn’t being made] driven by the day-to-day lived experiences of people?

Stryker: A ton of it. They drive by the pump. They know what the cost of a pound of ground beef is supposed to be, or boneless skinless chicken breast. Those are the things they talk about, meat and groceries — those are the things they really see.

Stryker’s memo was also confusing on that point of the economy.

He pointed out that voters are not motivated by being told the economy is getting better because they look around and see disastrous signs everywhere they turn:

Jobs numbers, wage numbers, and the number of people we’ve put back to work don’t move them. We should still talk about these (more the wage and back-to-work numbers), but we should realize that they will have limited impact when people are seeing help wanted signs all over main street, restaurant sections closed for lack of workers, rising prices, and supply disruptions. Even where things are getting better, Biden doesn’t get credit.

One might point out to Mr. Stryker that perhaps Biden does not get any credit because the successful economies are found in red states like Florida, not Democratic states.

Stryker also says that he was surprised education played such a role in the Virginia election but that Covid-19 policies and school closures were a bigger factor