John Sexton writes for HotAir.com about a significant shift in American voters’ perceptions.
CNN data analyst Harry Enten had a segment … which hammered home a message Democrats have been struggling with for months. They have completely lost their historic advantage on the question of which party cares most about average Americans.
During “CNN News Central,” Enten pulled up new aggregate poll numbers showing that Americans currently believe that Republicans care about U.S. citizens as much as Democratic Party figures do, a poll that has historically favored the Democrats.
“This, to me, is one of the most shocking pieces of poll data that I truly, truthfully have seen this year, or maybe in any prior year,” he said, noting elsewhere how unexpected these numbers are after Trump unveiled his controversial tariffs earlier this month.
Enten displayed poll numbers showing that in the three previous decades, the Democratic Party smashed the GOP in the category of which party is believed to care more about Americans. In 1994, the party had a +19 majority over the GOP; in 2005, a+23; and in 2017, a +13.
But now the parties are tied. “All of a sudden, the Democrats, who were the party of the people. No more! No more!” Enten said. He then drilled down on why this was happening by breaking out the numbers of those with and without college degrees and how they responded to this question of who cares about regular people. In the past, Dems had an edge with both groups, but now they hold a solid lead with college educated voters but Republicans hold a lead among non-college educated voters. In short, blue collar workers have become a GOP constituency and that hasn’t changed despite some of the upheaval of the past two weeks.
It’s probably way too early to draw conclusions about what this means for the midterm elections in 2026 but Enten did say that as of now, Democrats shouldn’t be counting their chickens.
