2 key findings on Democrats’ brand problem from the new CNN poll

There’s new evidence that the Democratic Party’s reputation is in a bad place. That doesn’t mean the party is doomed, electorally speaking. There’s plenty of reason to doubt that, given lots of history and its performance in the 2025 elections thus far — but it is a complicating factor for the party’s path forward. And a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS provides insights into the party’s problems. It’s worth a breakdown. The poll, which was released Sunday, asked a battery of questions about how people view both parties. Perhaps most striking was that people were more likely to view the Republicans than Democrats as the party with strong leaders (40% to 16%) and even the “party of change” (32% to 25%). Neither party won close to a majority in either category. But the former is notable because there is such a gulf between the two parties. And the latter is notable because the party that’s out of power is usually viewed as the party of change. Not this time. So what can we read into these findings? The GOP’s edge on strong leaders The “strong leaders” question might be the most troublesome finding for Democrats. Only about 1 in 6 Americans said Democrats have stronger leaders than Republicans. As remarkably, only 39% of Democrats said that. We’ve seen hints of this in previous polls. A March CNN poll found about 3 in 10 Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters couldn’t name a single leader who best reflected the party’s core values. An AP-NORC poll last month showed just 35% of Democrats said they were at least “somewhat” optimistic about the future of their party, compared with 55% of Republicans for their party. This might not seem too surprising. We just said goodbye to a Democratic president (Joe Biden) who was a diminished figure even when he was still in office. And the Democratic nominee who replaced him (Kamala Harris) wasn’t exactly viewed as the future of the party when she took over the ticket in the 2024 race — and then lost. But there was a time when Democrats were at a somewhat similar crossroads, and the numbers weren’t as dismal. A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll asked the same question in 2006 — after John Kerry’s unsuccessful emergence as Democrats’ 2004 presidential candidate — and found a smaller 14-point advantage for Republicans. Back then, 63% of Democrats said their party had stronger leaders than Republicans — 24 points higher than today. One reason for the difference is that the 2025 and 2006 polls asked the question in a slightly different way, partly because one was conducted entirely by phone and the other mostly online. Today’s poll gave people an explicit “neither” option, which the 2006 poll didn’t (though some people volunteered that option back then). Nearly half of Democrats in the new poll (48%) chose that option. That’s still a remarkable finding. Combined with the 13% of Democrats who said Republicans have the stronger leaders, that’s 6 in 10 Democrats this year who don’t think their side has stronger leaders than a party led by a president whom a huge majority of them revile. A counterintuitive Democratic deficit on ‘party of change’ The other notable finding is on which party is the “party of change.” Americans chose Republicans, 32% to 25%. That’s not a big gap, but it is counterintuitive given Republicans swept the House, Senate and White House last fall. Historically speaking, it’s almost always the party that’s out of power that’s viewed as the party of change. Before the 2006 election, the same CNN-ORC poll mentioned above showed Democrats had a huge, 56% to 29% lead on this measure. Then, as now, Democrats didn’t hold the presidency or either chamber of Congress. But the numbers are very different today. Not only do Democrats trail on this measure, but only a slight majority of Democrats themselves — 51% — say their party is the party of change. And only 18% of independents say that. It’s likely this is, in part, about Democrats’ failure to position themselves as change agents, but also about what President Donald Trump is doing — and about people not necessarily seeing “change” as a good thing. However you feel about the changes Trump is making, there is no question he is pushing lots of them. You see that in his and the Department of Government Efficiency’s rapid overhaul of the federal government and in Trump’s historic efforts to expand executive power — in ways that are often being halted by the courts because they go too far, too fast. It’s possible that people just see Trump changing lots of things, whether for good or ill in their opinions, so the “party of change” mantle doesn’t mean what it usually does. We already saw during the 2024 campaign that people’s definitions of “change” were somewhat jumbled by unusual circumstances — i.e., Harris replacing Biden, and a former president running as the challenger. But it’s also pretty clear that Democrats have failed to make themselves into a viable and attractive alternative to the party in power. The new CNN poll also asked which party people viewed as the “party that can get things done.” Republicans led on this by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, 36% to 19%. Only 49% of Democrats and 11% of independents picked the Democratic Party as the more formidable one. There’s also, of course, Republicans’ big edge on the “strong leaders” question. None of this means Democrats are sunk in the 2026 elections — or anything close to it. History shows the party that doesn’t hold the White House almost always wins midterm elections, in large part because they’re viewed as a check on the president. Democrats and liberal candidates have also been doing well in special elections and other races held since the 2024 election. In other words, being not-Trump could be good enough to at least reclaim a very closely split House. But if the Democratic Party wants to run up the score in 2026 and really chart a path for the 2028 election, it has some real work to do on its branding.