With President Donald Trump’s approval rating deep under water, and Americans’ views of his handling of the economy over 20 points more negative than they were on inauguration day, a naive observer of US politics might expect the Democrats’ fortunes to be rising.

Nothing of the sort. A recent CNN/SSRS poll from March 2025 found that just 29 percent of Americans hold a favorable view of the Democratic Party. That is the lowest number since SSRS began asking the question in 2002.

This overwhelmingly negative public sentiment toward the Democrats was confirmed by a new study of voters in four Rust Belt states (Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) conducted by the Center for Working-Class Politics (CWCP), the Labor Institute, and Rutgers University. It found that over 70 percent of Rust Belt voters hold a negative view of the party.

But the CWCP/Labor Institute/Rutgers survey went beyond simply asking respondents how they felt about the party. Rather, the researchers wanted to know if there was a discernable negative effect of running as a Democrat versus running as an independent in the four states tested. To answer this question, the survey tested respondents’ favorability toward economic populist candidates who employed identical language around corporate greed, lowering costs, and protecting jobs — except that some were described as Democrats and others as independents.

The result was stark: candidates described as Democrats performed 10 to 16 points worse in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio than otherwise identical independents delivering the same pitch. Pennsylvania was the lone outlier where this “Democratic penalty” did not appear. The drag was largest among working-class, Latino, and rural/small-town respondents — precisely the blocs Democrats must win to carry the key working-class-heavy battleground states.

Next, the CWCP/Labor Institute/Rutgers researchers wanted to know why so many people dislike the Democratic Party, but we wanted an answer that didn’t simply mirror the preconceptions of pollsters or consultants. Many surveys — including this oft-cited and particularly damning poll conducted by Blueprint in November of 2024 — present respondents with prewritten explanations (“too focused on identity politics,” “too far left,” “elitist,” and so on) and ask them to agree or disagree. Such instruments tell us whether voters will check a box we’ve given them. But they don’t tell us what voters say when we’re not putting words in their mouths.

So, the CWCP/Labor Institute/Rutgers poll did something different. We asked Rust Belt voters a single open-ended prompt: “When you think about the Democratic Party, what comes to mind?” Then we used text analysis to summarize thousands of unprompted answers.

Contrary to many analyses that have blamed Democrats for holding extreme positions on social and cultural issues that alienated swing voters, the dominant theme we observed was voters’ anger at the Democratic Party for failing to deliver. Among Democratic and independent respondents, the most common critique of the Democratic Party was its perceived inability to carry out policies that help ordinary people.

One Democratic respondent felt that the party was “well intended, [but] poor [in] execution.” Another believed that “the Democratic Party talks a lot but has accomplished little in recent years.” A third put it succinctly: “Some good ideas, but very ineffective at enacting them.” Many independents voiced similar frustrations, describing Democrats as “People who offer lip service but aren’t interested in changing the status quo,” lamenting that Democrats don’t do “what they were elected to do,” or saying, “I am so disappointed with the Democratic Party and feel they haven’t represented their constituents in a long time.”

Relatedly, substantial percentages of both independents and Republicans stressed that they felt the Democratic Party is untrustworthy, either because they lie or because they are corrupt. One Republican respondent reported feeling that the Democratic Party “has become extremely corrupt while pointing the blame at others. [They are] more interested in helping themselves than helping their constituents.” Along similar lines, an independent respondent charged that the Democrats were the “party of the rich and fraudulent.”

Both independents and Republicans were more likely than Democratic respondents to describe the party as out of touch or alienating. A typical independent put it plainly: “They are out of touch and have forgotten who they are.” Others were even more caustic, calling Democrats “completely out-of-touch a**holes,” who are “focused on the wrong priorities.”

Some of these “out of touch/alienating” criticisms clearly carry cultural undertones, but these weren’t the main driver of discontent. Only 11 percent of independents and 19 percent of Republicans explicitly mentioned “wokeness” or ideological extremism in their description of the Democratic Party. Among those who did, the language, not surprisingly, could be scathing — Democrats were labeled “communists and traitors,” “a bunch of woke clowns,” and “harmful to children, families, and the country.”

The upshot is that while some voters were turned off by what they viewed as the Democrats’ overly progressive positions on social and cultural issues, these were not the dominant concerns of Rust Belt voters. This finding runs counter to high-profile postelection polling from groups like Blueprint, which suggested that majorities of 2024 swing voters believe that Democrats “have extreme ideas about race and gender” and are generally “too focused on identity politics.”

To reach persuadable swing-state voters, then, Democrats don’t need to mimic Trump on divisive issues; they need to show they’re aligned with working people, willing to confront powerful interests, and capable of producing concrete gains. None of this eliminates the party’s cultural vulnerabilities — especially around the perception that Democrats are elitist and condescending — but the evidence suggests most voters who hold negative views of the Democratic Party are motivated less by the culture war than by a broader judgment that the party is captured by elites and not delivering tangible gains for working people.

If Democrats have any hope of capitalizing on Republicans’ increasing political vulnerabilities, they need to work tirelessly to show skeptical voters — who feel burned by decades of false promises — that they are serious about reclaiming the mantle of America’s party of the working class.