Democratic Voters Who Skipped 2024 Election Want Candidates Like Bernie, AOC

Since Donald Trump’s crushing defeat of Kamala Harris in November, Democrats have agonized over their loss. Manifestos have been published, podcasts launched, summits held — all in the name of trying to figure out how to win back the voters Democrats lost last year.

But new research suggests the prevailing wisdom that has guided those efforts — the idea that Democrats tacked too far to the left last year — might be, well, wrong.

The polling, conducted by Democratic pollster Celinda Lake on behalf of the progressive donor network Way to Win, indicates that, contrary to Beltway groupthink, these voters would have preferred someone more progressive than Harris. According to Lake, the Americans who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and sat out the 2024 election generally hold a favorable view of Democrats, they believe inequality is at the heart of the country’s problems and health care should be available to everyone who needs it, and they want candidates committed to fighting for that vision.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the politicians most popular among the voters polled were the ones who have long campaigned on making health care accessible to all, and making billionaires pay their fair share: Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) were far and away the favorite candidates of voters polled. Seventy eight percent of those polled held favorable views of Sanders, and 64 percent had favorable views of AOC. Governors Gavin Newsom (Calif.) and Gretchen Whitmer (Mich.) also polled reasonably well among these voters, earning favorability ratings 60 and 50 percent, respectively.

“The conventional wisdom is really wrong on these voters,” Lake tells Rolling Stone. “They’re very clear about what they want and what they thought was missing in 2024: They want leaders who will fight for everyone… They’re very health care-oriented…They want to crack down on Big Pharma… They’re very populist. They have a clear economic agenda around affordability and making the wealthy pay what they owe in taxes.”

Perhaps most critically, Lake adds: “You can’t get these voters by just being against things. You have to be for something… You have to be offering solutions… And you have to be standing up and fighting.”

Previously publicized voter file data indicated that millions of voters who cast votes for Biden in 2020 failed to appear at the polls to back his vice president four years later. Lake Research Partners polled 822 registered voters in battleground states who matched that profile, and what they found was that those voters are more liberal, and more plugged into the news, than many of the loudest pundits and prognosticators have assumed.

The most common answer given by these voters for why they didn’t vote is because they “didn’t like either candidate” and felt like they were being forced to choose between “the lesser of two evils.” When asked about specific policies, the most frequently cited reason these voters gave for not voting for Harris was because she failed to adequately address their economic concerns, like the cost of living and the scourge of income inequality.

Asked about the policies that would motivate them to cast a vote for Democrats in the 2026 midterm elections, an overwhelming majority — 62 percent — of these voter said they would be “very likely” to back a Democrat who made securing affordable health care for those who need it the centerpiece of their campaign. The same share of voters said they would vote for a candidate determined to make the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes.

Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, a co-founder and chief strategy officer at Way to Win, says that the Biden drop-off voters, based on the polling, appear to be “uniquely winnable — and a key element to building back a more sustainable Democratic coalition, which is what we have to do.”

“The whole entire Republican agenda under this new Trump regime is truly an opportunity for Democrats to go on offense,” she says.

Ancona notes these voters’ “top issue is affordable health care,” so Democrats should have a “golden opportunity” right now. Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” signed into law on July 4, will once again slash taxes for the ultra-wealthy, and do so while punishing the poor. Roughly 17 million Americans are expected to lose their health insurance as a result of the law, combined with Republicans’ refusal to extend subsidies for marketplace coverage.

These voters are “really ready,” Ancona says, “for messaging to go on offense against what the Republicans are doing — whether it’s cutting health care that hurts children, giving billionaires more tax giveaways, doing absolutely nothing to cut costs.”

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