House Dems’ internal poll shows woke backlash against their agenda in competitive districts

House Democrats got a wake call from new internal polling that showed their far-left agenda is turning off voters in battleground states.

In preparation for the midterm campaigns, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee hired consulting firms to poll voters online in the 60 most competitive congressional districts and discovered that a majority of those voters aren’t woke.

The voters overwhelmingly said Democrats went overboard with COVID-19 mandates, want to defund police and are responsible for the illegal immigration crisis at the southern border.

The survey found that 57% of voters in battleground congressional districts agreed with the statement “Democrats in Congress have taken things too far in their pandemic response.” Another 66% of self-defined “swing” voters in these districts also agreed with the statement.

The polling results were shown to DCCC officials Thursday and first reported by SFGate in San Francisco.

Republicans saw the poll as vindication that their messaging effort against Democrats is working. 

The pollsters also asked swing district voters about the veracity of other GOP statements related to Democrats’ policies on crime, immigration, spending and cost of living. Sixty-four percent agreed with the statement “Democrats in Congress support defunding the police and taking more cops off of the street,” despite national Democrats’ hard push this cycle of a message that they support funding local police departments.

The poll showed that 80% of self-identified swing voters in the competitive districts agreed that Democrats want to defund the police and take cops off the streets.

About 62% of respondents agreed with the statement that “Democrats in Congress have created a border crisis that allows illegal immigrants to enter the country without repercussions and grants them tax-payer funded benefits once here,” and almost 80% of swing voters concurred, according to the report.

Majorities of voters in the battleground districts supported the phrases that “Democrats in Congress are spending money out of control” and “Democrats are teaching kids as young as five Critical Race Theory, which teaches that America is a racist country and that white people are racist.”

The DCCC poll indicated that the top two concerns of voters in competitive districts are inflation and health care. The COVID-19 pandemic, Medicare/Social Security, and climate change came in at third, fourth and fifth, respectively. Voting rights, taxes and racial justice/equality were listed at the bottom of voters’ concerns who live in competitive districts.

Health care is the only top issue that aligns with the House Democrats’ agenda. House Democrats have focused on voting rights and racial justice — issues that ranked at the bottom of voters’ concerns in the poll.

“Voters know the truth about Democrats’ socialist agenda. Every vulnerable Democrat has a choice: retire or lose,” National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Mike Berg said in a statement.

DCCC Chairman Sean Patrick Maloney, New York Democrat, told MSNBC that his party’s candidates can navigate through these issues, despite where they rank in the poll’s findings.

Counting himself on the anti-mandate side of the debate, Mr. Maloney applauded the handful of Democratic governors who lifted mask mandates in their states last week. He said that the pandemic appears to be winding down and that the country will be in a “very different place” on the issue by the end of the summer or early fall.

“That will be so good for our country, and I think you’ll see that lift a lot of boats as that tide comes in because I don’t even think we know how beaten down we are,” he said on MSNBC.

He also said that Democrats need to take the issue of rising crime “seriously” but that Democrats cannot turn their backs on their criminal justice reform efforts either.

“We can reject the false choice between public safety and fighting for racial justice. We believe we gotta do both in this country. And we don’t want to just go back to mass incarceration and locking up a lot of people of color blindly,” he said. “Look at what Eric Adams is doing in New York. It’s a pretty good template.”

The poll was conducted from mid-January to early February. Pollsters spoke to 1,000 respondents and the poll had a 3.1% margin of error, according to the report.