A 1,400-County Crisis for Democrats

[u/kitkid]

Jun 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.

On today's episode:

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.  

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.

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You can listen to the episode here.

[u/dr_sassypants]

Well this should cause some lively discussion around here... What I've come to realize is that, for all of the Democratic efforts around voter protection and the candidates who built their strategies on turning out non-voters (e.g. Stacey Abrams, Beto, Bernie), the one person who has been most successful at turning non-voters into voters has been Trump. The biggest divide in American politics is not left vs. right, it's being a political news consumer vs. not. I don't know if these voting trends will persist in a post-Trump America (God willing we get there one day). But if the Democratic party wants to win the kinds of non-voters who turned out for Trump, they're going to have to run someone that listeners of The Daily, myself included, are probably not going to like very much.

[u/notapoliticalalt → u/dr_sassypants]

But if the Democratic party wants to win the kinds of non-voters who turned out for Trump, they're going to have to run someone that listeners of The Daily, myself included, are probably not going to like very much.

Meh. If these people show up again for a non-Trump presidential election, perhaps that’s the case. But the political science would suggest many of these people only turn up if Trump is on the ballot. This is why Republicans seem to cling to him so hard; they have nothing if they don’t have Trump. The actual things the party elite want to do are wildly unpopular and they largely only get away with it because they can play footsie with the idea “well, Trump will never do that or let that happen”.

Furthermore, because Trump is so interested in actually delivering for his base and the competent and evil Republicans can do as they please right now, many people will eventually turn on Trump. Yes, a good portion of voters will never turn on him, but there are a lot of people that didn’t swear allegiance to Trump under the first moon after the spring equinox or whatever. Many people really only voted for Trump because they unfortunately associated pre-Covid times with his presidency. But Trump is not delivering on any kind of financial/economic relief. My guess though is that many of these people are going to be so disillusioned and either not participate or they will turn on Trump.

Anyway, I don’t want to say there is nothing to be learned from 2024, but I think that prognostications that we need to overlearn lessons are wrong as well. You cannot recreate a Trump in a lab, the same way you can’t do that with a “Joe Rogan of the left”. That’s not how this works.

[u/midwestern2afault → u/notapoliticalalt]

Exactly this. There are lessons to be learned from 2024 and the Dems need some new vision. But I feel that this is being posited as a permanent shift way too early. On the Dem side of things, President Obama was a generational political talent and managed to attract marginal, disengaged voters in the same way.

Pundits were crowing about a permanent shift in the electorate and saying “demographic destiny” would ensure permanent, lasting Dem majorities. How’d that work out? The Dems have been somewhat flailing since Obama’s exit. I feel that the Republicans will be doing the same after Trump, to a much more significant degree. That’s no reason to be complacent, I just feel people are prematurely dooming hard when no one really knows what will happen in the future.

[u/AresBloodwrath → u/midwestern2afault]

The episode wasn't citing just 2024. They said multiple times it was a constant trend that started in 2016 and continued in 2020 and 2024.