The Arizona Democratic Party has been hemhorrhaging voters for years. It’s time to change our message and motivate the people once again.
Matt Grodsky is a partner at Matters of State Strategies. He was the communications director for Adrian Fontes’ 2022 secretary of state campaign and served as communications director for the Arizona Democratic Party in 2020. On X, formerly Twitter, @mattgrodsky.
Despite the tears, the anger and the hand-wringing, there is a path forward for the Democratic Party.
We must get our voters back.
There are many reasons why we lost this cycle. It’s never one thing.
But the reality of 2024 is that a President with a consistent 39% approval rating, despite his historical achievements, would always need help convincing the public for a second term.
Unless the Democratic nominee was going to buck the perceived status quo, headwinds were inevitable, regardless of Trump’s overwhelming disqualifications.
As someone who has been rooting for Kamala Harris since Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016, it’s a hard truth to accept.
Democrats’ Message has Grown Stale
A sticker encouraging people to vote Democrat sits on a message board as Gov. Tim Walz campaigns ahead of next week’s presidential election in Flagstaff on Nov. 2, 2024.
As the American Dream has become less attainable for the middle class, perpetual anger has driven the electorate.
Since 2016, voters constantly seek “change” and rebel against what they view as the incumbency. That’s how we can go from Barack Obama to Donald Trump, to Joe Biden, to Trump again.
That doesn’t mean our losses had to be as brutal as they were.
Our messaging has grown stale, and our appeal to broader swaths of the electorate has diminished. These issues must be addressed in Arizona so we can pull voters back into our tent.
Democrats retooled our messaging in 2018 to recapture the narrative with swing voters, and that gave us huge wins.
In 2020, coalition building, consistent media appearances from party leadership, a coordinated campaign built around Senator Mark Kelly, and a consistent message that we were the party of common sense helped bolster strong voter registration.
Those gains helped flip our state for the first time in 25 years. But as I warned in 2022, this trend wouldn’t last.
The Party is Hemorrhaging Arizona Voters
Since the close of 2020, Arizona Democrats have been hemorrhaging voters.
Until this point, our statewide and swing district victories have relied on Democrats voting a straight ticket, winning the majority of independent voters and carving out enough moderate Republicans to put us over the top.
That worked for a while. But not this time.
There are 4.37 million registered Arizona voters. Republicans represent the largest group with 1,562,091 (35.77%), followed by independents with 1,471,309 (33.69%), then Democrats with 1,266,536 voters (29%).
The Republican registration advantage over Arizona Democrats has grown since 2020. While the Republican Party has maintained some 35% of all registered voters, we fell from 33% in 2020 to 29% today.
Most alarming is that 37,000 Democrats switched to Republicans after Biden’s 2020 victory, while just 19,000 Republicans became Democrats. Meanwhile, nonpartisan registration shot up from 25% to 29%.
The Far Left Cannot Continue to Define Us
Arizona Democrats must enter the midterms at fighting strength. That means having more voters in our ranks. It likely means it’s time for fresh leadership.
Registering requires good messaging. People aren’t choosing our party because our furthest left elements are defining our narrative and taking us off message.
Democrats lack an empathetic tone on the economy. We have monolithic communications practices with communities of color.
We use borderline Elvish lingo birthed from think tanks that push the limits of political correctness. We lack strength and appeal in rural areas.
All of this must be considered so we can properly persuade new and unaffiliated voters to become Democrats. Messaging on the American Dream must become our north star.
Democrats Ignore These Trends at Their Peril
If you’re a Democrat frustrated with having to rely on independents and moderate Republicans to win elections, good. Register more voters in the Democratic Party.
If you’re confused about how voters could back an abortion rights initiative and then vote a straight Republican ticket, good. Go register more Democratic voters.
2024’s results were not an aberration. This was years in the making. People left us, and too few who stayed were motivated enough to vote.
We ignore this at our peril. We must register voters and then convince them to cast a ballot.
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“The far left” didn’t define the Democratic Party.
The Republicans did.
Learn a lesson from Ruben Gallego:s victory – define yourself before the Rs lie and do that for you.
“We use borderline Elvish lingo birthed from think tanks that push the limits of political correctness. We lack strength and appeal in rural areas.”
Translation: cut out the woke culture crap like allowing biological males on girls sports teams. But you will not listen and will continue to roam mindlessly in the political desert.
Oh, okay, still no arguments for why anyone should ever vote Republican from the internet’s most boring troll.
Maybe you could explain how women’s rights won in your very own backyard, Mr. John Who Eats Taxpayer Funded Cheese-Whiz Kavanagh?
How did your party blow that one so very, very badly?
If your policies are so great, why did progressive policies win, even in Red States?
You know your policies suck, that’s why you NEVER ANSWER THE QUESTION. LOL!
You clearly do not have the courage of your own convictions. So sad.
Also, what is it with you always worrying about people’s bikini areas?
There are how many trans athletes in Arizona, John? How is what goes on in someone’s nether’s such a big deal to you?
Curious, ain’t ya? So very curious…
On The Colbert Report (so many years ago) Stephen made the observation that as part of the anti-trans bathroom police if you’re checking out a stranger’s genitalia that makes YOU the pervert!
However, don’t expect the “Good Senator” to understand that. He & his ilk are nothing more than (to paraphrase a Rockford Files episode title) mental dwarfs wearing helium hats.
Oh, hey, look at that!
Not one of the rapists or pedo’s on my list of folks John Kavanagh supports is trans…
What I’m seeing here Matt is really HOW we lost Arizona (we had less Dems and those we had too often voted for the other side or stayed home) and other swing states, not WHY. I don’t understand WHY Dems acted as they did. We bled support from nearly every pillar of our coalition and Harris remained on message with the discipline of a Jedi focused on bulls-eyeing an exhaust shaft on the Deth Star.
I’m not seeing much advice here, Matt. You identify some concerning trends in registration and voting, but your messaging suggestion seems to be to triangulate toward the center.
We basically ran this cycle as the de facto conservative party; and we failed. Never did Harris/Walz center such ‘woke’ policies or rhetoric that you seem to deplore here, they didn’t even focus at all on the historic nature of Kamala’s personal identity. They had great discipline about talking policies that, 1) could be reasonably achieved through the budget reconciliation process, and thus could not be filibustered, and 2) centered real kitchen table concerns such as inflation and cost of living, healthcare, elder and child care, business formation, jobs, infrastructure, and housing. How could our messaging have been LESS woke and practical? Yet we lost with such a reasonable and focused message. Explain THAT.
On The View, Harris said she could not think of one Biden policy that she disagreed with while calling herself the candidate of change. That did not sound de facto conservative to me. That quote got massive coverage.
Don’t get me wrong, I really hope that all of you think you lost because you didn’t go far enough left. I really want to see a repeat of this in two years.
Trump – Rapist, convicted con man
Hegseth – Rapist (also, believes in family values so much he has three ex-wives, keeps getting caught cheating) and did I mention he’s a rapist?
Gaetz – Pedo, cocaine aficionado, rich boy who’s daddy got him out of multiple DUI’s, has orange jumpsuit mug shot to prove it
Musk will trade you a horse for a handjob, has lots of babies by lots of mama’s, likes to smoke weed on Joe Rogan and takes a lot of ketamine, also, a government contractor who gets billions in taxpayer subsidies, would fail drug test, wants people to die in space because he’s thinks we can terraform Mars (too many sci-fi movies, he can’t), bought Xitter for 44 billion dollars, ran it into the ground, considered the worst purchase in business history, so smart
Trump, lots of babies by lots of mama’s, divorced several times because family matters, man, like it’s super important
Trump, RFK, Musk – all good friends of Jeffery Epstein
Doctor Oz – literal TV snakeoil salesman, lost his election (for a state he didn’t live in) because he thought the price of crudités was too high, so relatable!
Pam Bondi – takes bribes, foreign lobbyist
Tulsi Gabbard – Putin puppet, America hater, member of weird cult
Nancy Mace in 2021 – “I support LGBTQ+ people!”
Nancy Mace in 2024 – “I sway with the breeze, and it’s like super windy!”
Elon Musk – illegal immigrant from Africa, been saying self driving cars are coming “next year” for over ten years, been saying we’ll be on Mars in two years for ten years
Melania Trump – soft core lesbian porn model, copied verbatim speech from Michelle Obama, complains about having to do Christmas stuff, won’t be living with Don-old in DC this time, totally not a gold digger, not American, great role model
John Barron – a totally real person
Don Jr, Eric, Ivanka (aka “daddy’s girl”) – forbidden to operate charities in New York after fraud convictions
Don-old Trump – bragged about spying on naked underage girls on Howard Stern’s shock jock radio show, so, a pedo
Don-old Trump – selling Chinese made guitars for 10k, Chinese printed bibles with the constitution for 60 bucks, so patriotic, if you’re Chinese
Mar a Largo – staffed each year with 80 foreign workers to save money (aka not giving American’s jobs) – also, has US military secrets in the bathroom
John Kavanagh – hates big government while living off of government checks
Seems your party can’t find any not-rapey, not drugged up, not con artists to run.
Cool, dude. Keep up the good work and we’ll see you in the midterms and 2028!
I can’t wait. 🙂
Matt, do you think going too far left is what hurt Dem Kathy Hoffmann in her loss to current Republican AZ School Superintendent Tom Horne in 2022?
Take a stand. Our big tent mentality of inclusion often leads us to be too careful. Take a stand.
I disagree about your assessment that we moved too far left.
Take a stand.
Fight
Fight to win.
The economy.
Catering to Republicans fails to address real issues.
I strongly support Bernie.
See his insightful message: https://www.instagram.com/p/DCC3TFUBbkO/?img_index=1