After years of walking on their feet, that’s why Democrats are feeling good about 2026
For much of the past two years, the US Democratic Party has been reeling, enduring crushing electoral defeats to its Republican-wide opponent while facing a worrying decline in voter registration and a party-list base.
Polling data for the summer of 2025 painted a bleak picture as polls showed a negative, multi-year approval rating for the party’s performance in Congress.
The number of self-proclaimed Democrats also fell sharply, especially in some key states needed to win the presidency, according to data from 30 states and Washington, DC, which collects and reports polling organizations.
Progressive columnists have spent barrels of ink trying to identify exactly why the party is so unpopular with voters — did the left’s swings on race and gender, climate and guns alienate swing voters? Or was it because President Donald Trump, a political chameleon, had robbed the party of shutting down a multiracial labor union?
Whatever the reason, the group has been facing what some members call a “seismic crisis” or an “imminent threat” to its long-term performance. In July, almost half of all voters polled said they would consider joining a third party.
But, in the closing days of 2025, the pendulum seems to be swinging towards the Democrats.
Dems show promise in off-year elections
Most of the party’s candidates entered the November elections in Virginia and New Jersey, two states that have been solidly Democratic in recent years but have looked vulnerable in recent months.
Trump did better than expected in New Jersey in the 2024 presidential campaign – losing to Kamala Harris by just six percentage points, better than his past performances and how other recent Republicans have fared there. That red wave had some analysts wondering: is New Jersey the next state to skate?
But the GOP’s hopes quickly faded as votes were counted in the Garden State gubernatorial election on Nov. 4.
Democrat Mikey Sherrill, a moderate, outlasted his Republican opponent, winning by more than 14 percentage points.
The first major election in America since US President Donald Trump took office was a clear victory for the Democratic Party. Andrew Chang explains how victories have come in key races in Virginia, New Jersey, California and New York City – and explains how the momentum in these local and state elections offers lessons for Democrats about how to take on Trump. Photos provided by The Canadian Press, Reuters and Getty Images
Another Democratic leader, Abigail Spanberger, swept Virginia, winning by 15 points in a state Harris won by less than six last year.
What followed that victory – and a strong showing for Socialist Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani, who won the New York City mayoral election – was a surge in polling elsewhere.
“This election went in favor of the Democrats – this is the so-called canary in the coal mine,” said Barbara Perry, a presidential historian at the University of Virginia, in an interview with CBC News. “You’re starting to see the cracks in Trump’s power.”
Even in Florida, once a bleak state that is now deep red after some COVID-inspired changes, a Democrat won Miami’s mayoral race this month with a landslide. It was the first Democrat win there in 28 years and local media called it “good luck” for a party that has struggled to communicate for some time.
Trump’s approval ratings slip
Nationally, Democrats are also seeing signs of health.
Trump’s approval ratings have fallen despite some successes such as cracking down on crime and illegal border crossings. A recent Marist poll shows Democrats in double digits among voters heading into the 2026 midterm elections — the first time in more than three years that Democrats have held such a lead.
America’s sluggish economy appears to be the cause of voter disenchantment and Trump’s backsliding, said Matthew Lebo, a professor of American politics at Western University in London, Ont.
While Trump bravely fought to kill Biden-era inflation on “Day 1” of his presidency, Democrats are trying, with some early results, to change the script on affordability.
“Everything goes back to establishing the issue so that there is a plan to be able to pay the costs,” said Mamdani, whose campaign promises include free buses and kindergarten.
Spanberger, on the other hand, promised to use the power of the state to cover the cost of drugs and low energy levels to face the challenges of the cost of living that Trump recently called “a fraud started by the Democrats.”
“Right now, the Democrats are ahead, and that lead should grow as bad economic data comes out,” Lebo said in an interview.
“Democrats will be more likely to come out and vote against Republicans and Donald Trump in 2026 than Republicans will keep him,” he said.
Economic struggles can shape voting
Unemployment is up, inflation is stubbornly high, prices have risen for almost everything – with data suggesting an increase in those trade-related taxes being borne by consumers, not just the businesses that initially pay them.
An expert at the National Bureau of Economic Research said that the tax from foreign countries increased the rate of inflation by 0.7 percent.
The stock market surged after Trump’s tumultuous tax rollout in April — the S&P 500, an index that tracks some of the 500 largest U.S. companies, is up about 18 percent in the year to date — but those gains have not been felt by all, or most, voters.
As Bill Clinton’s former staffer, James Carville, quipped during the 1992 presidential election: “The economy, stupid.”
Then-president George HW Bush, who registered some of the highest approval ratings ever after leading the US to victory in the first Gulf War, saw his support plummet as the economy falters and heads into recession.
Carville pressed his successor, Clinton, to intervene on all economic issues during the campaign – a strategy that paid off.
Could tariffs be Trump’s fault?
That’s what Michael Negron, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and a former Biden White House official on the National Economic Council, thinks his party should do again in mid-2026.
Negron wrote a recent report on the economic effects of Trump’s taxes, which found that small business owners are paying about $25,000 more per month because of those taxes than they did at the same time last year — a huge increase passed on to consumers in some cases.
Because of this, Negron says many people are now equating prices with inflation — and that’s prompting some voters to rethink their loyalty to the president and his signature economic policy.
Persistent inflation is “one of the main causes of the president’s unpopularity,” Negron said in an interview with CBC News. “Payments are his responsibility.”
While conservative Democrats have supported the tariffs in the past and some unions affiliated with the party have expressed support for Trump’s plan, Negron says the party must forcefully criticize Trump’s policies to appeal to voters worried about their inability to pay the bills.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, Harris tried to frame Trump’s tariffs as a national sales tax. Although Negron said it “didn’t seem to really affect people” at the time, that has changed.
“Trump took this obscure tax tool and made it mainstream. People know what it is now and they don’t like what they see,” he said.
“Trump’s broad, sweeping taxes are raising costs for everyone and hurting small businesses — and Democrats should be willing to say that.”
