Last week I gave a presentation at the NewDEAL Forum’s Ideas Summit.

I told the group of Democratic leaders from around the country the moderately good news that we recently found voters nationally lean toward voting Democratic this year 46-42.

That’s a 6 point shift from 2024 and would likely mean getting control of the House by a modest margin, picking up a couple Senate seats, and making decent gains in state legislative seats.

But the Democratic advantage could end up being so much more. 66% of undecideds said they disapprove of Donald Trump to only 18% who approve.

Midterms often end up being a referendum on the President and if all those undecideds voted in correspondence with their feelings about Trump the Democratic advantage would go up to 55-45, a *12 point* shift from last time. Then you’re talking about taking the Senate, a very robust House majority, and flipping legislative chambers right and left.

That’s no guarantee though, and you only have to go back to 2022 to see it isn’t.

2022 was a rare year where our polls were pretty much right…and yet I was surprised with the election results. That’s because we saw this same dynamic where all the undecideds were unhappy with the President. I figured they’d break toward the GOP at the end and most of our small leads in key races would turn into small losses.

But they didn’t. And they didn’t because voters saw the GOP as obsessed with abortion and other social issues that voters either flat out disagreed with the party on or at least did not consider high priorities for their elected officials to work on. Plenty of anti Biden voters ended up choosing Democrats anyway because they didn’t like the Republican alternative.

That’s why it’s so important for Democrats this year to stay laser focused on the things swing voters care about.

The top two issues for them by far are inflation and affordability (37%) and jobs and the economy (21%). 78% of them are dissatisfied with the economy. 75% of them say their own household is stagnant or falling behind economically. 70% of them identify either the price of groceries or the price of gas as the biggest issue in their household.

This is just about all Democrats should be talking about in 2026. You need three conditions for an issue to be really effective politically: 1) voters need to actually care about it, 2) they need to think the other side is bungling it, and 3) they need to think you will actually make it better.

Trump and his allies have tanked the economy and are getting the blame from voters, so those first two conditions have already been settled. The onus is on Democrats now to show voters that they care, understand their pain, and will do better.

When you think of swing voters you think of folks who go back and forth between voting for Democrats and Republicans. Winning them is important but especially in midterms there’s another kind of swing voter- people who have to decide whether they care enough to vote at all.

Both of those groups of swing voters are generally in the 20th percentile or less of political knowledge. Democrats have a bad habit of spending way too much of their energy on messaging to people in the 95th percentile of political knowledge and that’s how we’ve gotten a reputation for being out of touch with normal people.

What we need to do this year is not complicated and could have amazing returns- if we can just stay focused on the mess Trump has created for people’s household finances and how we’ll do better anti-Trump voters on the fence will move to us and that 4 point advantage we have right now really will turn into a 10 point advantage and take us from a good year to an incredible year.

Hopefully we have the discipline to do it.