In the aftermath of a brutal 2024 electoral defeat, Democrats are grappling with an unsettling narrative emerging from focus groups: voters who once stood by the party now see it as detached, ineffective, and overly preoccupied with issues that feel disconnected from their lives.

Progressive organization Navigator Research conducted a series of focus groups with swing voters and Democrats who switched allegiances in the 2024 election. The findings reveal a party that, in the eyes of these voters, has become synonymous with complacency and elitism, leaving a gulf between its leadership and the electorate.

When participants were prompted to liken the Democratic Party to an animal, one drew a parallel to an ostrich, explaining, “They’ve got their heads in the sand and are absolutely committed to their own ideas, even when they’re failing,” according to focus group research unveiled by POLITICO. Another compared the party to koalas, critiquing them as “complacent and lazy about getting policy wins that we really need.” Echoing a sentiment of disillusionment, another participant remarked, “Democrats are not a friend of the working class anymore.”

“I think what the Democratic elites and their politicians believe is often very different from what the average Democratic voter is,” said one Georgia man, who shifted his support from Biden in 2020 to Trump in 2024. “The elites that run the Democratic Party — I think they’re way too obsessed with appealing to this very far-left social progressivism that’s very popular on college campuses.”

When asked about inflation and tariffs, many participants in the focus group admitted they didn’t fully grasp the policy implications, while others expected price increases. One man from Wisconsin shared his mixed feelings: “Obviously, I wouldn’t want stuff to go up, but at the same time, in the long run, would it be better off for America and maybe having more stuff made here?”

Rachael Russell, director of polling and analytics at Navigator Research, characterized the focus group feedback as “a pretty scathing rebuke” of the Democratic Party brand. “This weakness they see, [Democrats] not getting things done, not being able to actually fight for people — is something that needs to be figured out,” Russell said. “It might not be the message, it might be the policy. It might be something a little bit deeper that has to be addressed by the party.”

Russell suggested that Trump’s favorable ratings signify a “honeymoon” period, which she anticipates will diminish once he assumes office. “Once things start happening, it’s going to take a turn, and so it’s going to rely really heavily on the actions in the first 100 days to see how we go from here,” she predicted.

While the focus group voters did not solely attribute their dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party to Kamala Harris, they revealed significant reservations about her candidacy. Participants criticized her as “inauthentic,” “very dishonest,” and “did not seem competent.” An Arizona man referenced a specific instance when Harris said, “You better thank a union member,” during a speech in Detroit, describing it as “very disingenuous to me because I didn’t see an honest person that could be president.”

Another participant, who voted for Biden in 2020 but switched to Trump in 2024, commented, “It seemed like a lot of what she came out and said wasn’t really off-the-cuff, wasn’t coming from her,” he said. “Seemed like every interview, every time she came out and talked about something, it was planned out and never her thoughts, didn’t seem genuine to her thoughts, whereas, Trump, even though you never really knew what he was going to say, when he was going to say it, it was always him and genuine to what he thought, so that’s what swayed me.”

Several focus group participants discussed a transgender-themed attack ad by the Trump campaign, which used a 2019 clip of Kamala Harris supporting gender-affirming surgery for state prison inmates, with the tagline: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”

“I think that there needs to be some parameters on what’s accepted in society and what isn’t. Some of the societal norms, and I think that the Democrats have tried to open that up a little too much,” said a Wisconsin woman, who also skipped voting. When asked if she referred to the “trans issue,” she replied, “primarily that.”