Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is well aware that the Democratic base is pretty upset with the party. And I’m really understating the level of that anger and annoyance, but just know that’s reaching cosmic levels at the moment.
In other words, a huge split is now separating the party’s congressional Democrats from real people in the grassroots movement. And it’s looking so deep, so severe that it could completely alter the whole 2026 primary election season.
Over the last few years, Democrats have typically had much higher popularity with their voting base than that of the Republican Party. However, the major defeat the radical leftists suffered during the 2024 election seems to have created a sort of “divorce” in that relationship.
“A review of Quinnipiac University’s annual first-quarter congressional polling reveals that, for the first time in the poll’s history, congressional Democrats are now underwater with their own voters in approval ratings,” Yahoo News reported.
Just 40 percent of Democrats approve of the job performance of congressional Democrats, compared to 49 percent who disapprove. That’s a dramatic change from this time last year, when 75 percent of Democrats approved compared to just 21 percent who disapproved. The Democratic base’s disillusionment runs so deep that it’s eerily reminiscent of Republican grassroots sentiment in the period leading up to Donald Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party.
The numbers are clear: No longer satisfied with the status quo in their party, Democrats are on the verge of a Tea Party-style, intra-party revolt.
The Democratic approval data is unlike any in recent history — and it isn’t a case of bitter, disaffected partisans reacting to a loss in the last election. The first time Democrats lost an election to Donald Trump, their congressional approval ratings within the party actually ticked up, as Democratic base voters largely approved of the ways that party leadership resisted the Trump administration in early 2017. The same phenomenon surfaced among Republicans in 2021 when, despite Trump’s defeat and the subsequent chaos of Jan. 6, Republican voters remained generally positive regarding their views on the congressional GOP.
The closest partisan parallel to the level of anger currently gripping Democratic voters would be roughly a decade ago, when Republican political unknown Dave Brat toppled House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a shocking 2014 primary upset. Two years later, Trump tore through a crowded field of accomplished establishment candidates and forever upended Republican politics.
What’s even more shocking is the absolute chaos and confusion that is consuming the Democratic Party. Those who are in the party don’t know if they want to go back toward the right some and become more centrist or if they want to be more radical in their leftism.
A total of 45 percent want to see the party become a bit more moderate in their policies, while 29 percent want to go even more liberal, with 22 percent wanting it parked right where it is.
It baffles the mind there are people in this country who actually want to go further to the left. Liberals policies as they existed during President Joe Biden’s term are the reason why Democrats lost and are stuck in their current position. Why would you want to go even further to the left?
It’s almost a guarantee you’ll lose every election from now until you decide to become moderate again. Idiocy has infected the mind of the average left-winger it seems.
Instead, the numbers suggest that the fury is at least partly fueled by the Democratic base’s dissatisfaction with congressional leadership’s relatively conciliatory approach to Trump this time around, and their inability to stop him. Recent polls from CNN and Data For Progress both found supermajorities of Democratic voters calling for the party’s congressional leadership to do more to oppose the president — a sentiment that sparked the fierce backlash against Schumer’s recent move to facilitate the GOP’s passage of a continuing resolution funding the government.
Historic precedent suggests it would be extremely unusual for this kind of dissatisfaction to persist without any major changes in the party, especially because these voters don’t have anywhere else to go. Third parties continue to see their vote shares decline, and polarization between the two major parties continues to rise, meaning that the odds of these dissatisfied Democrats voting for non-Democratic candidates are extremely low.
The numbers from this survey show that the primary season for both the House and the Senate is likely going to be brutal for Democrats. During the mid-terms, 13 Democratic seats in the Senate will be up for grabs.
Most of those seats are occupied by veteran senators in deep blue states, which means they have a greater chance of getting primaried by younger candidates who are more aligned with the values of the party base.
A number of liberal organizations are already demanding that Sen. Chuck Schumer resign from his position as party leader after he decided to vote in favor of a Republican stopgap funding bill.
“Hoping that the unrest blows over, and that Democratic voters return to the fold eventually, isn’t a smart option. The Republican establishment learned it the hard way in 2010 and the two subsequent election cycles, when House and Senate incumbents and other party-backed candidates were frequently dragged into bruising primaries that resulted in shocking upsets,” Yahoo concluded.
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