ICYMI: DNC Releases New Analysis on How Democrats Won Voters of Color by Addressing the Affordability Crisis Head-On – and How Democrats Can Win in 2026 Arrow

Key Point: "A new Democratic National Committee analysis shared exclusively with CNN has found that economic concerns overwhelmingly propelled the party's recovery among minority voters in last year's New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections … 'Affordability was the dominant issue,' the study concludes. 'The 2025 governor's races in both states were shaped overwhelmingly by one defining reality: the increasingly higher cost of living has become THE lens through which voters judge politics, candidates, and their own futures.'"

CNN: This is the Democrats' plan to solve their biggest long-term problem

[Ronald Brownstein, 1/11/25]

• A new Democratic National Committee analysis shared exclusively with CNN has found that economic concerns overwhelmingly propelled the party's recovery among minority voters in last year's New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections.

• "Voters want concrete results they can see in their bank accounts and feel in their quality of life. If Democrats fail to act or cannot prove that the government can be used to improve people's lives, there likely will be backlash - erasing the gains earned in the 2025 (campaigns)."

• The new DNC analysis - based on pre- and post-election polling and focus groups among Black and Latino voters in New Jersey and Virginia - is unequivocal in concluding that the party can lastingly reverse that shift only if it restores its own credibility on delivering tangible economic improvements for average families.

• The report identifies one factor above all in driving that outcome: the success of Sherrill and Spanberger at convincing minority voters they understood, and were determined to address, the strains on their living standards.

• "Affordability was the dominant issue," the study concludes. "The 2025 governor's races in both states were shaped overwhelmingly by one defining reality: the increasingly higher cost of living has become THE lens through which voters judge politics, candidates, and their own futures."

• In all the polling and focus groups the party conducted, the memo continues, "pocketbook concerns, consistently and without prompting, rose to the top of what voters are concerned about and what drove their vote choice in 2025."

• Beyond the admonition to keep affordability at the center of their agenda, the DNC report also encouraged candidates to describe voters' financial squeeze in terms that connect to daily life in the most concrete language possible.

• When these voters talk about their economic challenges, "It's not your mortgage, it's your rent. It's not groceries; it's food. It's not utilities; it's heat. It's not health care; it's 'I can't pay for my pills,'" said Jill Alper, a Democratic media consultant who worked on the project.

• Finally, the report said candidates must offer responses that are as concrete as the anxieties voters feel. The research, Amandi said, signals that laundry-list plans to address affordability are much less likely to land with voters than a small number of very tangible pledges - such as Sherrill's highly visible promise to freeze utility rates if elected, or Spanberger's pushback against energy-gobbling artificial intelligence facilities.

• House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, in a plan he's tentatively titled the "You Deserve Better" agenda, has already previewed that the eventual party blueprint will center on affordability, health care and corruption.

• Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has signaled his intent to craft a similar pledge. "Democrats are going to make health care and other high costs - the high cost of living - the number one issue for all of 2026," Schumer declared last week.