President-elect Donald Trump’s decisive victory in the 2024 election, which surprised many in what was expected to be a close race, has understandably prompted the Democratic Party to conduct a comprehensive autopsy of the Harris campaign. Politicians, pundits, pollsters, and media commentators have all reached several conclusions. Yes, the Democrats ran a campaign that pandered to the interests of white, upper-class, and educated voters while leaving minorities, young people (especially young men), and the working class behind. Yes, Democrats emphasized abortion, democracy, and Trump’s morally despicable character at the expense of proposing pragmatic solutions that would lower prices for basic goods and decrease illegal border crossings. Yes, Kamala Harris did not do enough to differentiate herself from Joe Biden, a president who was already deeply unpopular with most Americans. Her campaign also made a strategic error by selecting Minnesota Governor Tim Walz instead of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. And yes, Americans were generally fed up with the status quo and wanted radical change. But amidst all the discussion about what mistakes the Harris campaign made, the media has consistently underappreciated the influence of one key demographic: moderate voters.
While we do not yet have precise data about how the moderate vote swung in 2024, we do know that it broke slightly for Trump in 2016 and broke decisively for Biden in 2020. It would not be surprising if the moderate vote swung in Trump’s favor this time around. Even though many moderates (including myself) surely remembered the chaos and division that defined Trump’s first administration and his actions on January 6th and decided to vote for Harris for both reasons, for many others, these reasons were simply not persuasive enough. Whether these reasons should be compelling enough is a discussion for a different day, but that’s how things turned out. For moderates and independents who find themselves disillusioned by the two-party system and feel that the Democratic and Republican parties are radicalizing with no end in sight, neither candidate in this election presented a truly compelling option. Trump likely captured many moderate voters simply because of economic and immigration-related issues; these voters may not have endorsed every word that came out of his mouth or agreed with his stances on contentious social issues but were willing to overlook his flaws to get policies that would reduce inflation and secure the southern border. The Harris campaign likely missed a crucial opportunity to win over these voters, not only by failing to present a well-developed economic and immigration agenda distinct from Biden’s but also by devoting significant time to personally demonizing Trump supporters. When a political candidate spends time attacking their opponent’s supporters, that does nothing to persuade undecided, middle-of-the-road voters to vote for that candidate. If anything, it turns them away because at least the other candidate recognizes that people are dissatisfied and offers an alternative (even if such an alternative happens to be deeply disturbing and problematic). This is not to say that Harris did not focus on policies, and it is certainly correct to observe Trump’s flaws and criticize him for them. But to take Trump’s horrendous character and use that to make a sweeping generalization about his supporters—characterizing them as a group of morally bankrupt fascists who are bigots and hate democracy—is an example of the extreme and divisive rhetoric that turns moderate voters away.
A key characteristic of the moderate voting bloc is that they do not subscribe to extreme ideas and resent the reality that rhetoric has overpowered American politics. Moderates are mainly concerned about finding reasonable solutions to important problems and using cooperation and compromise to achieve collective goals. Moderates aim to embrace people who disagree with them, not turn them away or characterize them as inherently bad people. The Democrats do not need to make their policies more right-wing to win over moderates in future elections. Indeed, the critique that Democrats acted too “woke” in this election is severely misguided; the policies proposed by Harris and other down-ballot Democratic candidates were decidedly moderate. However, the Democratic establishment needs to dramatically change its approach to the way it characterizes ideologically conservative voters. This is not to suggest that Trump’s rhetoric was unifying; in fact, it was anything but. But because Democrats were the incumbent party in this election, they had even more of a responsibility to reject the urge to fight fire with fire. Democrats had a golden opportunity to be the bigger party and emulate the rhetoric that made Barack Obama so inspiring to tens of millions of Americans in 2008, but they didn’t even come close to capitalizing on it.
Donald Trump may not have explicitly courted moderate voters, but Democrats desperately need to rethink their approach if they want to capture the moderate vote in 2028.
Jack Samet ’27 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He is a Staff Writer for the Washington University Political Review and can be reached at jack.samet@wustl.edu.