'There is a realignment happening': Expert reveals how Dems were caught off guard in 2024

Although President-elect Donald Trump's victory over Vice President Kamala Harris wasn't the "landslide" MAGA media pundits are claiming it was — Trump, according to Cook Political Report, won the popular vote by roughly 1.5 or 1.6 percent — it was a victory nonetheless. And many Democratic strategists have been asking: What went wrong?

During a Friday, November 29 appearance on CNN, Democratic pollster Evan Roth Smith argued that the election results reflected a "realignment" in U.S. politics.

"We are the party of the establishment," Smith, the lead pollster for Blueprint, argued. "I mean, there is a realignment happening in the American electorate where Democrats, you know, are representing kinds of different people than we thought we were. Our coalition looks a little different than we thought it did. And the Republican coalition is changing too, right? It's more multiracial."

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Smith continued, "The Republican coalition, it's less wealthy. The Democrats are getting whiter and wealthier in terms of our voter coalition."

The Democratic pollster went on to describe the ways in which members of his party will need to respond to "changing parameters" and be "respectful of reality."

"OK, if that's our coalition, if that's the changing parameters of the American electorate, then how do we win within those parameters?" Smith said. "And one of the things you see is, um, you know, you have to make — you can't wish an electorate or a coalition into existence that, that you don't have. And there are a lot of people who want us to be the party of certain things."

Smith continued, "But the Democratic Party isn't a vehicle for any particular ideology or any particular constituency. It's not a reactive force against Donald Trump. The mission of the Democratic Party is to go out and win elections. And again, we have to be real about what that entails."

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Republicans, according to Smith, have "stolen" Democrats' image as being "the popular resistance to the man."

"That's a field that used to belong entirely to the Democrats," Smith said, "and now, it doesn't."

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