Poll Suggests a Possible Path Forward for Democrats

Ever since Kamala Harris’s defeat in 2024, Democratic politicians, activists and policy wonks have argued about whether the party should move toward the left or the center.

But in this week’s New York Times/Siena poll, there’s a lot more common ground than one might expect within the Democratic coalition — a group defined here as Democrats, Democratic-leaning independents and independents who voted for Ms. Harris.

A surprisingly clear majority of the Democratic coalition is mostly fine with where the party stands on the issues overall. Only 20 percent say it’s “too far” to the left; only 17 percent say it’s “too far” to the right. The dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party seems less about its ideology and more about its failures to stop President Trump — whether in the last election or once in government.

With Democrats generally satisfied with the party’s ideological position, the poll arguably contains the outlines of a potential path forward for the party. Respondents offered relatively clear answers on three basic questions that have divided the party since the last election: They say Democrats should embrace economic populism, oppose aid to Israel and find modest ways to shift toward the center on the cultural issues thought to have contributed to President Trump’s victory in 2024.

This path happens to have a lot in common with the Democratic politicians who have seemed to resonate across the party’s ideological spectrum this cycle, like Graham Platner in Maine or Senator Jon Ossoff in Georgia. While Mr. Platner is more progressive and Mr. Ossoff more moderate, they’ve both earned a reputation for attacking corruption and corporate power, they’ve supported restrictions on offensive military aid to Israel, and they’ve de-emphasized the culture wars.

But the debate within the party hasn’t been about whether to embrace this specific mix of populist economics, moderation in the culture wars and the progressive view on Israel. Instead, the biggest argument is whether the party as a whole should move toward its left or center flanks. On that question, voters in our poll appear more divided.

Overall, 47 percent of the Democratic coalition said they would like to see the party move toward the center, while 28 percent said the party should move to the left, and 19 percent said the party shouldn’t move at all.

A slightly higher proportion — 52 percent — said the party needs to move to the center to win the next presidential election, compared with 25 percent who say it needs to move left and 18 percent who say it doesn’t need to move in either direction to win.

In each case, the centrist position may not be quite as far in the lead as it looks. If “move to the left” and “do nothing” are combined, the party is split 47-47 on whether to move to the center. When the question shifts to “in order to win” the 2028 election, moving to the center is ahead by a modest margin of 52 percent to 43 percent.

The appetite for a shift to the center also looks weaker when voters are asked about specific issues, including those often blamed for Ms. Harris’s defeat, like immigration or transgender rights. On immigration, just 46 percent said the party needed to move to the center to win, while only 38 percent said the same about transgender issues (though in each case, voters may feel that Democrats have already made some movement toward the center).

Perhaps even more important, the preference for shifting toward the center vanishes altogether when voters are asked about bread-and-butter issues, like the economy and health care. Most strikingly, half of the Democratic coalition wanted to see the party move toward the left on health care, compared with only 25 percent who wanted to see it move toward the center. Democratic supporters split roughly evenly on whether the party should move to the center or the left on economics, with 38 percent saying the party should move to the center and 37 percent calling for a move toward the left.

The poll found very little awareness of the so-called “abundance” movement, which calls for making it easier for the government and the private sector to build more housing and energy. More than 90 percent of the Democratic coalition said they had never heard of it. When asked whether they preferred a candidate who would pursue those goals or one who would try to lower prices by going after corporate monopolies, Democratic supporters preferred the populist by a two-to-one margin.

The party’s preference for a candidate who goes after the nation’s largest corporations — and presumably issues like wealth inequality and corruption — is underpinned by broad and deep dissatisfaction with the nation’s economic system. Overall, 88 percent of the Democratic coalition said the economic system was generally unfair to most Americans. A similarly large 83 percent said the political and economic system in America needs at least “major changes.”

And while the war in Gaza divided progressives from the party’s establishment during the Biden years, the progressive view on Israel is more like a point of consensus today. Only 15 percent of the Democratic coalition says it sympathizes with Israel more than with Palestinians, while 74 percent opposes additional military and economic support for Israel.

These examples of relatively populist and progressive policy preferences don’t necessarily mean that Democrats are always opposed to moving to the center. Two-thirds of the Democratic coalition does want to move to the center on at least one of immigration, transgender issues or crime, and nearly 70 percent say doing so is necessary to win in 2028, even if there is not a consensus on exactly which issue it should be. Of all the issues tested, “crime” is the one where Democrats are the likeliest to say the party should move to the center.

It’s also worth noting that respondents may want the party to move to the center in ways that do not necessitate shifting on policy. Although this was not asked in the poll, the backlash against “woke” was often less about the Democratic Party’s policy platform and more about a kind of righteous and identity-centric politics that had spread into everyday life.

Deliberately or not, the Democratic Party’s politicians have been inching toward the consensus positions found in the poll. In their own ways, many of this cycle’s most successful Democrats, like Mr. Ossoff, Mr. Platner and even Zohran Mamdani, could be said to fit the description across all three areas of consensus, even though they hail from very different parts of the ideological spectrum.

Whether this emerging solution to the party’s internal divisions would address the party’s other problems is another matter. The poll doesn’t offer insight into whether this kind of candidate would stand a much better chance of winning the general election in 2028, let alone winning by the decisive margin that Mr. Trump’s growing unpopularity could potentially allow. It also can’t foretell whether the party would succeed once in government if it enacted such an agenda. And of course, it was the party’s perceived failures in elections and governance that left Democratic voters dissatisfied and its elites searching for a new direction in the first place.

There’s no reason to assume that the preferences of the Democratic coalition offer a solution to those bigger challenges.

The detailed polling cross-tabs are available here.