Chris Cillizza Shocked By Just How Bad New Data On Dems Is

NewsNation political contributor Chris Cillizza said Thursday that fresh polling data paints a dire picture for the Democratic Party.

Just roughly one-third of Democrats said they were “very optimistic” or “somewhat optimistic” regarding the future of their own party, according to a Wednesday poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Cillizza said on his YouTube channel that this survey, alongside another poll, underscores how damaged the party has become.

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“The extent to which Democrats, Democrats think the Democratic brand is broken is pretty stunning to me, and we have a bunch of new polling data out lately that I want to go through that kind of explains where the Democratic Party is … the Democratic Party is in worse shape today, both in terms of how it’s viewed by the general electorate but also how Democrats feel about it, than at any time that I can remember in my covering of politics, which is now — because I’m old — almost three decades,” Cillizza said.

Cillizza walked through the AP poll’s numbers, noting the dramatic drop in Democrats’ optimism since July 2024, when the party was transitioning from former President Joe Biden to former Vice President Kamala Harris as its presidential nominee following Biden’s disastrous June debate against President Donald Trump.

“Maybe you get a little of the excitement of switching from Biden to Harris in those numbers,” he said. “But six in ten Democrats, even in that moment — which was chaotic at a minimum — even in that moment said they were somewhat or very optimistic about the future of the party. Today it is one in three.”

He also emphasized the stark contrast with Republican voters. The majority of Republicans, 55%, said they felt “very” or “somewhat” optimistic regarding their party’s future in the survey.

Cillizza then turned to a Tuesday Puck/Echelon poll, where Puck directed Echelon Insights to ask voters: “What is the first word that comes to mind when you think of the Democratic Party?”

Among all likely voters, the most common answers were “liberal, weak, corrupt.” Among Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters, the most common answer was “weak.”

“So ‘weak’ was the number one word that Democrats associated with their party. And ‘ineffective’ was right there as well. So: liberal, weak, corrupt for the general electorate, and weak and ineffective for the just-Democratic sample,” Cillizza said. “I find that — I guess not surprising, because we’ve had the Democratic brand in a place since Donald Trump won in 2024 that I’ve not seen before. In worse shape in terms of how people view it than I’ve ever seen before. I’ve talked to pollsters who said they’ve sat in focus groups, and the words that keep coming up are ‘weak’ and ‘woke.’ So that ‘weak’ word keeps coming up.”

“And I think that is sort of a big problem for the Democratic Party. You can’t be viewed as weak. You know, Donald Trump’s great strength — even for people who don’t agree with him — is he’s viewed as a fighter and tough. Now, we can debate whether he is a fighter and tough, but that’s how he’s viewed,” he continued. “And Democrats right now — even among themselves — see themselves as weak and ineffective. And I just think that’s incredibly telling and problematic for a party … these numbers and those words, even for me, who kind of knew that the Democratic brand was not in good shape, were pretty, pretty shocking.”