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By James Bickerton
News Reporter
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According to a new poll, 27 percent of registered American voters have a positive view of the Democratic Party, the lowest level recorded since NBC News began asking the question in 1990.
Newsweek contacted the Democratic Party for comment on Thursday via online contact form outside regular office hours.
Why It Matters
In November, Donald Trump secured a convincing presidential election victory over then-Vice President Kamala Harris, receiving 312 electoral votes to his Democratic rival's 226 and also winning the popular vote for the first time. The Republican Party also flipped the Senate and held on to a narrow House majority.
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The scale of Trump's triumph has sparked widespread soul-searching within the Democratic Party over what went wrong and how to rebuild. Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer has come under sustained criticism from within his party after voting last week to advance a Republican funding bill in a bid to avoid a government shutdown. The fallout over the vote highlights divisions among Democrats over how to proceed under the Trump administration.
What To Know
NBC News polled 1,000 registered American voters between March 7 and 11. While 55 percent of respondents said they had a negative view of the Democratic Party, 27 percent said they had a positive perception. The poll had a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.
The negative and positive figures for the Democrats were respectively the highest and lowest recorded since the network began its polling series more than three decades ago.
The survey also found that 38 percent of voters had a "very" negative view of the Democrats, contrasting 7 percent who had a "very" positive perception. Among independent voters, 11 percent had a positive view of the Democrats, while 56 percent saw them negatively.
There was also evidence of dissatisfaction with the party from its base, with 20 percent of Democratic voters viewing it negatively, twice as high as the figure for Republicans who had a negative view of their party.
The Democrats' approval figure is still above the lowest recorded by Republicans in an NBC News survey. In 2013, during a government shutdown, the poll found that 22 percent of respondents had a positive view of the Republican Party.
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The survey, which was conducted before the Republican funding bill passed the Senate, showed that Democratic voters wanted their party to take a tougher position in Congress.
Among Democratic voters, 65 percent said they wanted their congressional representatives to "stick to their positions even if that means not being able to get things done in Washington," while 32 percent said they should "make compromises with Trump to gain consensus on legislation."
The findings represented a significant shift from Trump's first term. In April 2017, 59 percent of Democratic voters backed the compromise option.
On March 14, Schumer and nine other Democratic senators backed the Republicans' spending bill in a procedural vote, reaching the 60-vote threshold that made it filibuster-proof. All but two of these lawmakers then voted against its final passage, at which point the Republican senators passed it—with only a simple majority being required.
Ahead of Schumer's vote, thousands of people signed a Change.org petition created by a Democratic activist urging him to block the funding bill. His support of the bill has sparked not only backlash from within his party but also calls for him to face a primary challenge.
What People Are Saying
Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates, which conducted the survey in collaboration with Republican pollster Public Opinion Strategies, told NBC News: "With these numbers, the Democratic Party is not in need of a rebrand. It needs to be rebooted."
MSNBC contributor Rotimi Adeoye wrote on X, formerly Twitter: "I don't want a 'left v moderate' ideological primary for Schumer. I want Pat Ryan, AOC, Daniel Goldman, and anyone else with fresh energy to primary Schumer. We need a new generation of leaders, not someone who has imaginary friends and uses them to understand swing voters."
Pam Keith, a former Democratic congressional candidate, wrote on X: "Let it be known this Friday March 14, 2025 that if @AOC primaries @SenSchumer, she will have my unqualified and total support, starting with a significant donation. And let it also be known that I will NEVER donate another dime to any Senator who votes yes for cloture."
What Happens Next
The Democrats face intense pressure to reorganize their party and policy platform ahead of next year's midterm elections, where they'll have the opportunity to seize control of either or both chambers of Congress.
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