Democrats Need to Face Why Trump Won

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Government, News

4.6 • 11K Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2025

⏱️ 78 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After the last election, there were all kinds of theories about where Democrats went wrong. But now, four months later, we have a lot more data – and it tells a few clear stories. David Shor is the head of data science at Blue Rose Research, a Democratic polling firm, which does an enormous amount of surveying of the electorate. A few weeks ago, Shor was walking me through a deck he made of key charts and numbers that explain the election results. And I thought this would be good to do in public. Because this is information that doesn’t just help explain what went wrong for Democrats in 2024. It’s a set of hard truths they need to keep in mind to mount a comeback in 2026 and 2028. This episode is also a bit of an experiment. It works great in audio. But on YouTube, you can actually see the slides. So if you’re up for a video podcast, this is a good one to start with: https://www.youtube.com/@EzraKleinShow This episode contains strong language. Mentioned: Blue Rose Research slide deck "Donald Trump is the perfect 'moderate'" by Ezra Klein Book Recommendations: The Hollow Parties by Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion by John R. Zaller The Victory Lab by Sasha Issenberg Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Isaac Jones, with Efim Shapiro and Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith and Kristin Lin. Original music by Pat McCusker and Aman Sahota. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From New York Times opinion, this is the Ezra Klein Show. I've been spending some time recently with top Democrats as they think about how to rebuild after the 2024 loss.
0:39.8	And I'll say that in the 20-some years I've been covering politics, I have never heard them so confused.
0:45.9	Confused about who they are, aside from the opposition to Donald Trump, but confused also about how and why they lost.
0:54.7	How could they've possibly lost this election to this person?
0:58.7	But also, how is the Democratic Party weakening so much among groups whose strength, who support it once took for granted?
1:06.5	They're losing working class voters.
1:09.1	They're seeing their margins among non-white voters erode and vanish.
1:14.8	They're losing young voters.
1:17.3	Something is wrong in the Democratic Party.
1:20.8	And so I think it's important as this conversation begins to roll forward, that it is grounded on a pretty real understanding of what happened in
1:30.0	2024. Someone whose analysis on this have come to respect over the years is David Shore.
1:35.2	David Shore is a head of data science at Blue Earth's Research, which is a big Democratic consulting
1:39.7	firm. It does a huge amount of political surveying and interpretation of data and testing of messaging.
1:47.0	He works with campaigns and progressive groups.
1:49.6	And so he has a sort of perspective from the inside there.
1:52.3	But also over the years, I think he's just a very skilled interpreter of data.
1:56.4	It's a very different skill, I should say.
1:59.2	And over years where he's been making some of these arguments,
2:01.7	he's gotten a lot of things right before other people did, including that educational polarization
2:06.3	was becoming the central fault line for American democracy, and frankly, not just American
2:11.5	democracy, but other countries too. And so when I saw Shore recently, and he began walking
2:17.0	me through some of his slides,
	...

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