These Are the Voters Who Should Scare Democrats Most

Five years ago, Raymond Teachey voted, as usual, for the Democratic presidential nominee.

But by last fall, Mr. Teachey, an aircraft mechanic from Bucks County, Pa., was rethinking his political allegiances. To him, the Democratic Party seemed increasingly focused on issues of identity at the expense of more tangible day-to-day concerns, such as public safety or the economy.

“Some of them turned their back on their base,” Mr. Teachey, 54, said.

Working-class voters like Mr. Teachey, who supported Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020 but either backed President Trump last year or, as Mr. Teachey did, skipped the 2024 presidential election, help explain why Democrats lost pivotal swing counties like Bucks, and vividly illustrate how the traditional Democratic coalition has eroded in the Trump era.

But in interviews with nearly 30 predominantly working-class voters who supported Mr. Biden in 2020 before defecting or struggling deeply with their choices last year, many had a stinging message for the Democratic Party.

Just because we have misgivings about Mr. Trump, they say, it doesn’t mean we like you.

“I think I’m done with the Democrats,” said Desmond Smith, 24, a deli worker from Smithdale, Miss., and a Black man who said he backed Mr. Biden in 2020 at the height of the racial justice protests. But last year, disillusioned by what he saw as the party’s overemphasis on identity politics and concerned about illegal immigration, he voted for Mr. Trump.

Asked how Democrats could win him back, he said, “Fight for Americans instead of fighting for everybody else.”

An in-depth post-election study from Pew Research Center suggests that about 5 percent of Mr. Biden’s voters in 2020 switched to Mr. Trump in 2024, while roughly 15 percent of those voters stayed home last year. Mr. Trump retained more of his 2020 voters than Democrats did, a crucial factor in winning the election.

Polling on the current attitudes of those Biden defectors is limited, but it is clear the Democratic brand, broadly, continues to struggle. A Wall Street Journal poll released in late July found that the party’s image was at its lowest point in more than three decades, with just 33 percent of voters saying they held a favorable view of Democrats.

“They’re doing nothing to move their own numbers because they don’t have an economic message,” said John Anzalone, a veteran Democratic pollster who worked on that survey.

“They think that this is about Trump’s numbers getting worse,” he added. “They need to worry about their numbers.”

Certainly, anger with Mr. Trump, an energized Democratic base and the headwinds a president’s party typically confronts in midterm elections could help propel Democrats to victory next year.

Democrats have had some recruitment success (and luck), and they see growing openings to argue that Mr. Trump’s domestic agenda helps the wealthy at the expense of the working class, a message they are already beginning to push in advertising. There is no top-of-the-ticket national Democrat to defend or avoid, while Republicans have virtually no room to distance themselves from Mr. Trump’s least popular ideas.

But interviews with the voters whom Democrats are most desperate to reclaim also suggest that the party’s challenges could extend well beyond next year’s races.

Here are five takeaways from those conversations.

Biden’s disastrous re-election bid fueled a trust issue. It hasn’t gone away.

Kyle Bielski, 35, an executive chef at a private club, said he had typically voted for Democrats until last year’s presidential election, when he backed Mr. Trump.

Democratic leaders had insisted that the plainly frail Mr. Biden was vigorous enough to run, and they had encouraged skeptical voters to fall in line. Instantly after he dropped out, they urged Democrats to unite behind the candidacy of Kamala Harris, who was then the vice president.

That did not sit right with Mr. Bielski, who said he was already distrustful of Democrats who had pushed pandemic-era lockdowns. Ms. Harris, he said, “wasn’t someone that I got to vote for in a primary.”

“It almost seemed wrong,” continued Mr. Bielski, who lives in Phoenix. “It was kind of like, OK, the same people that were just running the country are now telling us that this is the person that we should vote for.”

After Ms. Harris became the Democratic nominee, some voters interpreted her meandering answers in televised interviews as an unwillingness to be straight with them. By contrast, while Mr. Trump gave outlandish and rambling public remarks riddled with conspiracy theories and lies, some said they had gotten the general sense that he wanted to tackle the cost of living and curb illegal immigration.

“It was difficult to understand what her point of view was,” said Bruce Gamble, 67, a retired substation maintainer for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority. Mr. Gamble said he voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 and Mr. Trump last year.

Mr. Trump “was able to communicate better to me,” he added, while Ms. Harris “felt like she was talking over my head, so I didn’t quite trust her.”

Worried about paying the bills, they saw Democrats as too focused on cultural issues.

Many in this multiracial group of voters said they thought Democrats had gone too far in promoting transgender rights or in emphasizing matters of racial identity.

But often, they were more bothered by their perception that those discussions had come at the expense of addressing economic anxieties.

“It seemed like they were more concerned with D.E.I. and L.G.B.T.Q. issues and really just things that didn’t pertain to me or concern me at all,” said Kendall Wood, 32, a truck driver from Henrico County, Va. He said he voted for Mr. Trump last year after backing Mr. Biden in 2020. “They weren’t concerned with, really, kitchen-table issues.”

A poll from The New York Times and Ipsos conducted this year found that many Americans did not believe that the Democratic Party was focused on the economic issues that mattered most to them.

“Maybe talk about real-world problems,” said Maya Garcia, 23, a restaurant server from the San Fernando Valley in California. She said she voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 and did not vote for president last year. Democrats talk “a lot about us emotionally, but what are we going to do financially?”

She added, “I understand that you want, you know, equal rights and things like that. But I feel like we need to talk more about the economics.”

But in a warning sign for Republicans, a recent CNN poll found that a growing share of Americans — 63 percent — felt as if Mr. Trump had not paid enough attention to the country’s most important problems.

As wars raged in the Middle East and Ukraine, some working-class voters thought the Biden administration cared more about events abroad than about the problems in their communities.

“They were funding in other countries, while we do not have the money to fund ourselves,” said Sarah Smarty, 33, a home health aide and an author from McClure, Pa. She said she voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 and Mr. Trump in 2024, adding that she viewed Mr. Trump as a man of action. “I would really like to see more jobs,” she said. “I would like to see them take good care of people who are homeless in our area.”

Mr. Bielski, of Arizona, said that against the backdrop of overseas turmoil, Mr. Trump’s “America First” message resonated.

But these days, he does not think Mr. Trump is living up to that mantra.

“We’re getting into more stuff abroad and not really focusing on economics here,” he said. “It doesn’t seem like he’s holding true to anything that he’s promised.”

Marlon Flores, 22, a technician at a car dealership, said the foreign policy emphasis — and a sense that life was tough regardless of the party in power — helped explain why he skipped last year’s election, as well as the 2020 presidential race.

“No matter how many times have we gone red, or even blue, the blue-collar workers” have seen little progress, said Mr. Flores, who lives in Houston.

They worry about illegal immigration. But some think Trump’s crackdowns are going too far.

Several people interviewed said they knew people who had been personally affected.

Ms. Smarty, for instance, said her friend’s husband, who had lived in the United States for 25 years, had suddenly been deported to Mexico.

Her friend is “going through some health problems, and they have kids, and that’s really hard on their family,” Ms. Smarty said. “I don’t really feel that’s exactly right.”

They’re not done with every Democrat. But they’re tired of the old guard.

Many of the voters interviewed said they remained open to supporting Democrats — or at least the younger ones.

“Stop being friggin’ old,” said Cinnamon Boffa, 57, from Langhorne, Pa. As she recalled, she supported Mr. Biden in 2020 but voted only down-ballot last year, lamenting that “our choices suck.”

Mr. Teachey, the aircraft mechanic, thought there was still room for seasoned politicians but, in many cases, it was time to get “the boomers out of there.”

He is increasingly inclined to support Democrats next year to check unfettered Republican power.

“They’re totally far right,” he said of the G.O.P. “Honestly, I don’t identify with any party.”

Ruth Igielnik contributed reporting, and Kitty Bennett contributed research.