The Daily - A 1,400-County Crisis for Democrats

Episode Date: June 3, 2025

It’s conventional wisdom that President Trump has transformed American politics. But a new county-by-county voting analysis from The New York Times of the last four presidential races shows just how drastically Mr. Trump has changed the electoral map.Shane Goldmacher, a national political correspondent for The Times, explains why the trends are a five-alarm fire for the Democrats and discusses the debate within the party over what to do about it.Guest: Shane Goldmacher, a national political correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: How Donald Trump has remade America’s political landscape.Six months after the election, Democrats are still searching for a path forward.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Photo: Emily Elconin for The New York Times Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

From the New York Times, I'm Michael Bobarro. This is The Daily. It's now conventional wisdom that Donald Trump has transformed American politics. But a county-by-county voting analysis from the Times, covering the last four presidential races, shows just how drastically Trump has changed the electoral map. Today, the reporter who conducted that analysis, Shane Goldmacher, on why it's a five alarm fire

for the Democrats and the debate within the party over what to do about it. It's Tuesday, June 3rd. Hey there. How's it going? Very well. I appreciate that tie. Thank you. It's just for you. I feel like it really, really shows up on audio. I think people can hear, they can hear the constriction. That there's a tie.

And the formality. Yeah. Okay, let's get started. Shane, always a pleasure. Thank you for having me. So you're a fan of the show. You're a fan of the show. I'm a fan of the show.

I'm a fan of the show. I'm a fan of the show. I'm a fan of the show. I'm a fan of the show. I'm a fan of the show. I'm a fan of the show. I'm a fan of the show. I'm a fan of the show. I'm a fan of the show. I'm a fan of the show. I'm a fan of the show. I'm That there's a tie. And the formality. Yeah. Okay.

Let's get started. Shane, always a pleasure. Thank you for having me. So you're officially on what I would think of as the what went wrong with the Democrats beat. Democrats and disarray beat on and on we could go. Democrats on a rowboat without a oar beat. And the people trying to grab an oar, right?

Right. How they're trying to rebuild from what went wrong. And this is now becoming a somewhat formal line of coverage for you and for many of our colleagues on the politics desk in the aftermath of the last presidential race. You're making something of a formal study of what went wrong and where the party needs to go. And you started, I think, quite logically, with a very deep dive into data. Yeah, I think that a lot of people have looked at the 2024 election and said, this was an

outlier for the Democrats, that the Democratic Party lost because Joe Biden was too old, that he stayed in the race too long, that Kamala Harris was a weaker candidate, that she didn't have enough time to prosecute the case, and on and on. But the 2024 election results were not a one-off. They weren't a one-off at all. In fact, they really trace an improvement that Trump and the Republican Party had been making since Donald Trump arrived on the political scene. And so I decided to look back over the last four elections at every

county election result dating back to the entire time Trump has been running and once before to set a baseline. Every county in the United States. Yeah. How many counties are in the United States? There are more than 3,100 counties in the country. And so you said dating back to... 2012.

And why starting there? Because that's the last election that Donald Trump wasn't on the ballot. So what did the balance between Democrats and Republicans look like in the last snapshot where this wasn't a Trump-led Republican party? And how has Trump transformed the political landscape in the three consecutive times he's been on the ballot? And what I found was really a flashing alarm sign for the Democratic Party.

Mm-hmm. And... Describe exactly what you found and why it's a flashing alarm. It's a flashing alarm that's a sea of red. So more than 1,400 counties in the country have trended continuously in the Republican direction since Trump has been on the ballot. So about half of all of the nation's counties. Nearly half of the counties in the entire country have trended Republican and less than 2% of the nation's counties have trended Democratic.

Only 57 of the counties in the entire country have moved continuously to the left. Wow. Hugely disproportionate. Hugely disproportionate. Hugely disproportionate. And look, the total number of people living in these Republican moving counties, way outnumbered the number of people living in these continuously Democratic moving counties. There's something around 42 million to 8 million people. Basically that data suggests that Republicans are improving their relationship to more and more voters in more

and more places while Democrats are not. And I think that while that top line number is scary enough for the Democratic Party, it's actually the complexion of those counties that is most concerning. We'll talk about that complexion for both kinds of counties, those moving further and further toward the Republican side and the pretty small number that are moving farther and farther toward the Democratic side. Well, let's start with the Democrats

because they're improving in so many fewer places. They're basically only doing better in the richest corners of the country and the most educated corners of the country. And on the flip side, Trump is doing better in working class parts of the country everywhere. So yes, we know that Donald Trump has done well in white rural parts of America.

He's doing even better now than he did when he first came onto the political scene. That's part of America. He's doing even better now than he did when he first came onto the political scene. That's part of it. The other part is he is doing better in working-class parts of the country that are diverse. Inner cities, black neighborhoods, Latino neighborhoods, big big cities, smaller towns in the south, all across the country, diverse places, Donald Trump has been doing better. Not once, not twice, three times in a row. Hmm. In 2016, he improved for the party.

In 2020, he improved for the party. And then again in 2024. What these maps showed is that his victory was the culmination of a set of improvements that Trump has been making among working class voters and diverse voters for a decade. Can you give us a couple of examples of some of the counties you're talking about? Maybe let's start with one of the counties that keeps becoming more and more blue, more Democrat, that is rich, that is highly educated, and then let's move to a county or to where

the Republicans keep gaining over the last three elections. It seems to be more working class. Yeah. I mean, so when you look at a map and you see these sort of splotches of blue, they're really concentrated around a few places. One of the places that sort of stood out was Los Alamos in New Mexico. And it was like, oh, this is interesting.

Why is this a little beacon for the Democratic Party in New Mexico. New Mexico. And it was like, oh, this is interesting. Why is this a little beacon for the Democratic Party? In New Mexico and the Southwest, there's not a lot of those here, right? So this was a triple trending, continuously moving towards Democrat counting in a part of the country that, as you just said, is generally quite Republican. Yeah. So, well, why is it? Well, it turns out Los Alamos is the home of Los Alamos National Laboratory, which, of course, is famous for helping develop the atomic bomb.

It is one of the leading scientific laboratories in the country. And what that means is there's a whole bunch of people there who are making a lot of money and who have a lot of college education. And so Los Alamos is this one little blue arrow in the democratic direction in the southwest because it is one of the highest income, highest educated corners of the country. On the flip side is Texas. Probably the most alarming single state in the country for Democrats is looking at the Republican gains all along the border in South Texas.

And the county that jumps out to me there is Star County. Star County is the county that has moved the most in the entire country from 2012 to 2024. This is a county that Barack Obama won overwhelmingly in 2012 and that Donald Trump won comfortably in 2024. So it's moved continuously to the Republican side. It's moved continuously in the Republican direction and the sum of that movement is 89 percentage points. Wow. And what's interesting is, Star County isn't just the county that has moved the most, it also is the most predominantly

Latino county in America. And it's not just shifting away from the Democratic Party, it's stampeding away from the Democratic Party. And while Star County is this one small county in the Texas border, what you see is that same type of movement in counties with broad Latino populations. Whether you're talking about the Bronx in New York City, Queens, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, places with diverse populations have moved steadily to the right.

Even in a lot of them where Democrats are still winning, they're winning by less and by a lot less. I mean, to use a fancy political science term, we're talking about racial depolarization. Just translate that. Yeah, for a long time, one of the most important markers of how a person was going to vote in America was, what race are you? Are you black? Are you you? Are you black? Are you Latino?

Are you white? That was the single greatest predictor. And it's still an incredibly powerful predictor. But what we see here is that Trump is changing that and that class is becoming the really important predictor. And by laying this out over time, you see that this isn't a one-election shift. This is a steady shift. Right.

What Donald Trump has done to some degree has created a class-based electoral monolith. Yeah. And this is a threat for Democrats because there are more people in America who didn't go to college than there are people in America who did go to college. There are more people in America who are working class than there are people who are upper class. If you look at education, there is not a single county in the country of the 1400 where Trump has continuously improved.

Not a single county that a majority of people had a college degree. Not a single county. And on the flip side, there's not a single county that a majority of people had a college degree. Not a single county. And on the flip side, there's not a single county where the Democrats have continuously improved, where less than 20% of people had a college degree. That's really stark. Of the 1,433 counties where Trump has improved continuously, only three had a median income of more than $100,000. So like way less than 1%. On the Democratic side,

only 57 counties have moved to the Democrats. 18 of them have an income of $100,000 per household, at the county level. So the Democrats are just improving where these wealthy enclaves are, and Republicans are improving just about everywhere else. Right. And for those of us with some gray in our hair, what is astonishing about what you're describing is how much it represents an inversion of the party's reputations and

even self-identification 25, 30 years ago. Democrats operated, they told themselves and their election results demonstrated this as the party of working America and Republicans were the party of wealthy America. And what you're describing is a complete, to some degree, not just an inversion, but a kind of annihilation of those reputations. I mean, I think it's the scope of the Democratic Party's defeat last fall and the increasing realization that this wasn't a one-off that's led to the Democratic Party soul-searching right now for what it stands for.

For years, the Democratic Party has basically identified itself as the party of the working class. It's a core part of the party's identity. And the results show that working-class voters no longer see the party that way. And at the same time, the party has banked on more diversity helping. That a more diverse America was going to be a more democratic America. And both of those things are no longer necessarily true. We'll be right back. Shane, when you came up with this county by county painstaking data, you shared it with a lot of Democratic strategists and elected officials to get their reaction.

So what was their reaction to it and how much did it surprise them? I think a lot of them were not surprised at the directionality of this information, right? This sort of fits with our understanding of the most recent election. I think people were more surprised by the depth and the scale of it and what it captured is the conversation that they're having, which is there's an urgency for the Democratic Party to find ways to stop hemorrhaging support among working class Americans. And there is a crisis for the Democratic Party that the erosion among Latino voters has come as the Republican

Party has embraced a leader in Donald Trump who has made border security his top priority, who has demonized at times Latinos. And so the party is looking at this and saying, my goodness, we are losing ground at this moment to this opponent. What does that mean about what our message is right now? Okay. And what's the answer? How much do the Democrats surveying the record chair and looking in particular at the data that you are finding, think of this as a policy matter as Democrats have chosen the wrong side of a set of issues, for example, like border security and immigration.

I mean, I think that there's two different fights that are happening simultaneously in of a set of issues, for example, like border security and immigration? I mean, I think that there's two different fights that are happening simultaneously in the Democratic Party around these questions. The first is about policy. Does the party need to shift what it stands for? I think immigration might be the single most important issue where the most robust debate is happening. The other side is, does the Democratic Party need to shift its posture, how it represents

itself to the country, how it appears, what it is fighting for? Are you advocating for working people explicitly? Are you focusing on economic programs that are targeted to the needs that people have, the costs that they're experiencing, not talking about things like student loan debt repayment, where you only got this if you went to college. And so this is something that came up in my reporting, talking to voters in 2023 and 2024. People would say, well, like, I didn't go to college, like, those guys got to go to college, why are we giving them money? And so even if that program on a policy basis was targeted at lower income earners, was targeted at diverse communities, the feeling was, well, the Democratic Party is the party

of college educated elites and they're giving money back to college educated elites, regardless of the specifics of how the policy was crafted. Right. That would be a really vivid example of where Democrats put a lot of their eggs in a basket that mathematically they already had. They weren't going to reach the voters that as your reporting shows, they're losing. Yeah. I think that not everyone is totally alarmed about the Democratic Party's future based on these numbers, even if they're concerned. I think one of the more interesting people I spoke to was Richie Torres, who's a congressman

from the Bronx here in New York City, who represents one of those triple trending Republican districts. A Democrat in Congress whose district has gone continuously more to the right over the last three presidential races. That's a fascinating conversation. And his district at one point was the single most democratic district in America. This isn't just a democratic seat. This is like the heart of a democratic struggle.

Yeah, so he's at the epicenter of the plates shifting. Yes. And so, Richie Torres said, look, this is a huge deal. And he's really worried about that for his party. But he also said, look, you know, huge deal, and he's really worried about that for his party. But he also said, look, you know, we talk a lot about the Democrats, like, maybe it's just Trump. Maybe Trump is just a singular figure.

And when he goes away, some of these issues go away. What if the Republican Party is defined by somebody else? What if it's the party of JD Vance or Marco Rubio or basically anyone who's not Donald Trump? Will this outlast and and he very much was unclear on the answer Whether the Democratic Party's problems can be resuscitated simply by not running against Yeah, this is the candidate like Trump blip theory of the Trump era on its face It feels a touch naive with all due respect to congressman Torres

Because this is Donald Trump's Republican Party right now, right? And it's hard to imagine the next nominee isn't working really hard to inhabit his mold. It will be someone who probably embraces all of the same policies. Well, then you get back to that. Is it policy or is it perception? Ah, I see your point. Is how Donald Trump perceived by voters because he was the host of The Apprentice,

because of his years of being on the public scene, is there something just to Trump that is driving this more than all of these other demographic factors? That's part of it. There are lots of other Democrats. Yeah, what's the other theories? There are lots of other democracies. The Democratic Party needs to stop talking the way it's talking because they're not talking in ways that people are connecting to. Look, there are studies after studies, there are groups lining up, focus groups to talk

to people all the time. Let's get a sense of like, how do people feel about the Democratic Party right now? And you know, one person I talked to has done a ton of these focus groups for years. She is sitting down with disaffected Democratic voters, swing voters. And she asks these voters, how do you feel about the two parties, but not asking directly. Instead, she asks, what animal do you think the Republican Party is? And the answers these voters have given fall into like really clear trends. And the number one trend is that these voters say that Republicans are like lions and tigers and bears.

They take what they want and just devour things. If they want it, they take it, they get it. And Democrats are three-toed sloths and slugs and tortoises, sort of slow animals. Not aggressive. Are not aggressive, are the prey. And they may not like that the Republican Party is lions and devouring things, but it feels pretty revealing about the Democratic Party's brand that it's these other animals.

What these focus groups would seem to reveal, and this is in opposition to what Congressman Torres is saying, is that this is a brand wide democratic image problem, not a question of Trump potentially being a blip. Because Donald Trump can go away and you still have a lot of these voters telling the focus group leader that the Democrats are the sloth. And so I think one of the things you're seeing is people fill the void to show that the party is not a sloth anymore. And that looks like Bernie Sanders going all across the country to red states, to places like Idaho and drawing big crowds to blue cities, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

These are Democrats who are saying- Go on the offense. We can go on the offense and we can even move to the left on policy, embrace an economic populism that can appeal to those working class voters of all diversities by saying the man is oppressing you, corporations are oppressing you, we need to go and take back power, we the people. But there's a different faction of the Democratic Party that is moderate, that does not want to move that direction.

This is the policies that Bernie Sanders and AOC are advocating, they might draw a crowd, but they're going to lose you in election because while they are fighting, they're fighting for things that are not ultimately popular in polling, whether it's immigration, whether it's a whole series of things that they say for Democrats to win back these voters, we need to moderate. What you're describing is a pretty familiar dynamic within the Democratic Party, this binary, where a populist movement that positions itself explicitly as anti-elite offers itself

up and to some degree takes root. And the moderate wing is afraid of it and tries to snuff it out. And in many cases has succeeded in overcoming the populist wing of the party. But the data that is at the center of our conversation here suggests that the party's greatest need is to recognize that racial depolarization and the fact that its future lies with a working class group of Americans, white, black, Latino, who are drifting further and further away from it and towards Republicans and Donald Trump and who don't like what the Democratic

Party has stood for up until now on immigration, where compared to the Republican Party of Trump, it's seen as insufficiently law and order or on trade, where Democrats are seen as backing free trade policies that destroyed manufacturing jobs, or on the government itself, where Democrats are seen as the defender of a bloated ineffectual establishment. So doesn't that suggest that the Democrats' future lies, and I'm being provocative here, but in a more populist version of itself? Doesn't the president's success in all these counties

over the last three elections suggest that some form of populism is undeniably effective? I think that there's no debate that the Democratic Party does not have a future if it can't make inroads again with working class voters. What you do to become that party is very much still up if it can't make inroads again with working class voters. What you do to become that party is very much still up for debate. I also think we should note that coming up with what the solutions are in the months

after an election is a notoriously hard thing to do. So no, I don't think you necessarily have to move in one particular direction. I think a lot of the energy right now in the Democratic Party is talking about moving in a more populist direction and finding something that sounds and feels like populism to voters, something that communicates that the party is unhappy with the status quo too, because voters are unhappy with the status quo too, because voters are unhappy with the status quo. So you have to tap into where voters are and voters are upset. The thing I'm hearing most from Democrats is a fear that the party won't make any major

changes and will still succeed in 2026. This next midterm. This next midterm. Because guess what? In midterm elections, more highly educated, higher income voters turn out in higher numbers. The places that have moved more democratic, those are the places more likely to turn out. The voters who have moved more democratic are more likely to turn out. And so the party might win the House in 2026, might do better than expected in some of these Senate races.

And the fear is that that overperformance could mask the deeper issues that are plaguing the party. And if you don't solve those problems now, that you will wake up to another results in 2028, where the country is again shifted to the right and elected another Republican as president. Well, Shane, thank you very much. Thank you for going through thousands and thousands of county data, along with an army of colleagues.

I like spreadsheets. Appreciate it. Thank you. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Monday, the man accused of using a makeshift flamethrower to attack a Jewish group in Colorado was charged with a federal hate crime. The suspect, who injured 12 people, told investigators that he had been planning the attack for a year and had wanted to kill, quote, all Zionist people.

And… The threat we now face is more serious, more immediate, and more unpredictable than at any time since the Cold War. In a major speech, the Prime Minister of Britain, Keir Starmer, announced plans to significantly ramp up the country's ability to wage war. Starmer called it an urgent new priority at a time when Russia has invaded Ukraine and the United States is stepping back from its commitment to protect Europe. We are moving to warfighting readiness as the central purpose of our armed forces. When we are being directly threatened by states with advanced military forces, the most effective

way to deter them is to be ready. And frankly, to show them that we're ready. To deliver peace through strength. The plan calls for the UK to build up to 12 new attack submarines and to invest billions of pounds into new long-range weapons. Today's episode was produced by Astha Chathurvedi, Olivia Gnat, and Alex Stern, with help from Nina Feldman. It was edited by Rachel Cuester, contains original music by Diane Wong, and was engineered

by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of WonderMade. That's it for the Daily. The new music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsferk of WonderMade. That's it for the daily. I'm Michael Baboro. See you tomorrow.