This writer is at a loss trying to understand what the Democrats’ post-2024 strategy is. Because after losing — again — to President Donald Trump, they sure seem like a political party lost in the wilderness.
They’re so infected with Trump Derangement Syndrome that they’ve doubled and tripled down on being on the wrong side of issues like illegal immigration and ‘trans women’ in sports.
Make no mistake: this writer is fine with this. The longer Democrats are in disarray, the better it is for Republicans.
But she’s baffled as to why no one in the Democratic Party has done some deep-dive soul searching to figure out why she lost.
Instead, they do this:
David Shor’s data demonstrates that “voters who got their news from TikTok were much more likely to swing to the GOP than other voters, even after controlling for demographics” https://t.co/9cWZVYuIKf
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) March 18, 2025
Democrats have spent months debating how and why they lost the 2024 election. But the full picture of what happened on Election day is now only coming into view. The most authoritative election analyses draw on a variety of different data sources, including large sample polling, precinct-level returns, and voter file data that shows definitively who did and did not vote. And those last figures became available only recently.
The Democratic firm Blue Rose Research recently synthesized such data into a unified account of Kamala Harris’s defeat. (Blue Rose Research did ad testing for Future Forward, the largest PAC supporting Harris, which had disputes on strategy with the campaign itself.) Its analysis will command a lot of attention. Few pollsters boast a larger data set than Blue Rose — the company conducted 26 million voter interviews in 2024. And the firm’s leader, David Shor, might be the most influential data scientist in the Democratic Party.
I spoke with Shor about his autopsy of the Harris campaign. We discussed the problems with the popular theory that Democrats lost because of low turnout; why zoomers are more right-wing than millennials; how TikTok makes voters more Republican; where Donald Trump’ s administration is most vulnerable; what Democrats can do to win back working-class voters; and whether artificial intelligence is poised to turbo-charge America’ s culture wars, among other things.
Recommended
So they’re blaming TikTok for turning voters Republican?
Hahahahahahahahaahahahahaha!
So it’s Tik Tok’s fault and not lousy Dem policies… you never will get it, will you Potato 🥔 Boy?!
— The_Clampdown (@TheClampdown) March 18, 2025
It’s never lousy Dem policies. It’s the voters who are too stupid to see how awesome Democrats are! And TikTok is to blame!
So the mainstream media is biased. Are you finally figuring that out Brian?
— Pacheco the Ghost (@PMtalking) March 18, 2025
He is not, in fact, figuring this out.
In other words, the propaganda from MSM did not translate to digital platforms.
Not only did Democrats lose, but so did MSM whose ratings have plummeted since being exposed as democrat propagandists during the election.
— Ever Earnest Mann (@ever_e_mann) March 18, 2025
They’re doing a bang-up job!
Basically, everyone saw how useless Kamala was, except Stelter and Co, LOLOL
— The Toon Libertarian (@ToonLibertarian) March 18, 2025
Correct.
Oh no. America is acting like pro America is in the best interest of the country 🇺🇸 and the democrats want to ban TikTok to stop it.
— policy over party (@policy0party) March 18, 2025
They keep clamoring to censor social media so they can win elections. They’re the actual fascists here.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding something, but the only TikTok data they show here is loss of support from Biden to Harris. I didn’t see any data to show that bleed went to the GOP. Seems more like it was leftists who stopped supporting democrats but didn’t vote for Trump. https://t.co/PtooWX9Sgs pic.twitter.com/EJ75cn74Lx
— Noam Blum (@neontaster) March 18, 2025
But Kamala lost, so they gotta figure out who to blame.
Eventually, they’ll get to their own voter base.
Never doubt the power of the algorithm. I thought TikTok tilted left. I saw video after video of young people making the case for Harris with a million+ likes. It gave me some hope. https://t.co/oJeJkiq8GI
— Christopher Wensley 🇺🇦 (@mipolitico) March 18, 2025
This is actually an admission that the more voters saw of Kamala Harris, the less they liked her.
Which tracks with the post above it: it wasn’t a shift right. It was a loss from Biden to Kamala.
Because she was a bad candidate running for a party that is out of touch with voters. Both on their side of and across the aisle.
