Dem
47
GOP
53
Democratic and Republican voters have very different ideas about what the Democrats care about. In contrast, everybody agrees what the Republicans care about. Let's start with what the voters actually care about themselves. The top three issues are highlighted with a darker background:
First, everybody thinks affordable prices are #1, especially Republicans. Democrats and independents think healthcare is also important; Republicans not so much. This suggests Republicans are not paying attention, because many Republicans live in rural areas and when their county hospital closes, the nearest one could be hours away. This is far less an issue for Democrats in cities or suburban areas where: (1) hospitals are less dependent on government subsidies and (2) the hospital density is much greater. Jobs and wages also rank high. So two of the three are about the economy.
Now here is the interesting part. What do Democrats and Republicans perceive as the parties' main focus? Here are the polling data for what the voters think Democratic leaders care about.
Democrats think their party is focused on prices, healthcare and jobs above all else. These are precisely the issues Democratic voters also think are important. In other words, Democrats are pleased with what they think their elected officials are trying to achieve.
In contrast, Republicans don't believe that at all. Only 13-15% of Republicans think Democrats care about the kitchen-table issues. By large majorities, Republican voters think the Democratic Party is all in on climate change, abortion and especially LGBTQ+ issues. For Republicans, these issues are totally irrelevant. They don't give a hoot about LGBTQ+ issues, think these are totally and completely unimportant, and blame the Democrats for thinking about nothing else. It's true Democratic leaders care somewhat about LGBTQ+ issues, but it isn't their #1 issue by a longshot. But Republican voters absolutely think it is and don't like it one whit because they don't think it is important at all. OK, 1% of Republicans think it is important. We suspect if the pollsters separated LGBQ+ from T, the latter would poll even worse. Independents are split on what Democratic leaders care about, with affordable prices and healthcare being on top, which is basically true. The message here couldn't be clearer. Fox News and Friends have convinced Republican voters that the Democrats are entirely focused on things Republican voters don't care about at best and hate at worst.
Now what does everybody think that Republican leaders care about? Here are the data:
Democrats think the Republican leaders care mostly about immigration, abortion and crime. If one equates "Republican leaders" with "Donald J. Trump," the Democratic voters are batting .333 here. Not bad—for baseball—but not so good for politics. Based on his actions, he cares most about immigration. He is sending National Guardsmen into blue cities to pick up litter, but mostly in low-crime areas. That isn't about crime. It is about intimidating the voters. If he really cared about crime, his BBB would have allocated $40 billion to allow states and cities to hire more cops instead of for ICE. And abortion? Trump has roughly zero interest in that one way or another. He knows if he were to get Kristi Noem or somebody else pregnant, he could send her to Maryland for an abortion. Abortion is not on his radar at all.
Republican voters, however, think their party is mostly concerned with immigration, which is correct. In second place is crime, which gets a lot of talk from Trump and Republican leaders, but little action. Next come the economic issues, which isn't even roughly true. And in contrast to Democrats, who (incorrectly) think Republican leaders (i.e., Trump) care about abortion, Republican voters (correctly) realize that abortion is not a Trump priority. Since it is also not a priority for most of them (evangelicals excepted), they are fine with this.
The main conclusion is that most voters have a tolerably correct idea of what the Republicans want. However, Republican voters are largely off-base on what the Democratic Party stands for. LGBTQ+ issues are not #1 by a country mile. Climate change probably is an important issue, but abortion isn't really in the top three. Democrats clearly have a messaging problem here. They need to downplay the LGBTQ+ stuff—not oppose it, but just not talk about it so much—and talk about prices and jobs from morning to night. For example, they can talk about all the jobs Joe Biden's bills created, especially in rural areas. They can and should also talk about how bringing broadband Internet to rural areas and creating solar farms in rural areas will create lots of blue-collar "manly" jobs there.
Another natural topic is to talk about passing a vastly stronger antitrust bill in order to break up big companies and force more competition. That is a realistic scenario for getting prices down. Make companies compete for your business. Not only should all future supermarket mergers be killed as soon as they are proposed, but existing large chains should be forcibly broken up. In New York, Zohran Mamdani ran on the idea of government supermarkets. That is probably pointless, but talking about breaking up Kroger and Albertsons to force more competition among the pieces might well get traction. In any event, it pits the Democrats against the perceived enemy, the big supermarket chains. This might even force the Republicans to defend them, which could be toxic. (V)