Former Clinton pollster Mark Penn said Friday evening on Fox News that the Democratic Party’s support from voters appears to be “falling off a cliff.”
Democrats have struggled to find a unifying message since the party’s historic loss to President Donald Trump in November 2024. With former Vice President Kamala Harris losing the party’s once tight grip on many key voting blocs, recent polls show Trump with one of the highest approval ratings of his two terms.
On “The Ingraham Angle,” Laura Ingraham asked Penn why he believes Democrats are failing to connect with voters. In response, Penn teased some of his data from a poll set to be released on Feb. 24.
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“Well, I’ve got some new polling coming out Monday that I’ve just looked at. Frankly, the Democratic Party is falling off a cliff,” Penn said. “The ratings, which were in the high 40s, are gonna be like 35%.”
“I think the basic question, ‘Who’s doing a better job as president, Biden or Trump?’ Trump is winning that with 57%,” Penn added. “I think you’re seeing a retrospective assessment of Biden and the direction the Democratic Party was going. It really [is] a lot more negative than it was on election day.”
During her campaign, pundits questioned Harris’ attacks against Trump as her team ramped up rhetoric, such as calling the president a “fascist,” as the former vice president failed to connect with voters on their top concerns regarding the economy, inflation, and immigration. Post-election polls conducted by The New York Times show Harris not only earned 7 million fewer votes than former President Joe Biden in 2020, but also fell short in three of the seven key swing states and in 80% of counties nationwide.
After Harris’ loss, Biden eventually told the Wall Street Journal that while it might be “presumptuous to say,” he believed he could have won the November election “based on the polling” had he not withdrawn from the race in July 2024. However, as Biden exited the White House and transferred power to Trump on Jan. 20, the former president left office with a 37% approval rating, while 63% disapproved of his job, according to a final CBS poll.
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“They’re looking at the contrast on immigration, on economic policy, on some of the social policies. And boy, they’re reevaluating the Democratic Party, I have never seen anything like this,” Penn said. “This is a record low for the Democratic Party in terms of favorability. It has fallen really, really way down. I don’t think there’s any leadership right now that’s gonna be able to bring that back.”
Democratic National Committee (DNC) members gathered on Feb. 1 to select the DNC’s new chair, choosing Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party Chairman Ken Martin. In an interview following his win, Martin told the NYT that he believes the party’s policies were not the reason for their struggles, but rather that their “messaging” is off.
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