Nearly two-thirds of Democratic voters say their party needs new leaders as frustration grows over its priorities and plummeting approval ratings, a new poll shows.
Sixty-two percent of Democrats say that the party’s leaders “should be replaced with new people,” compared with just 30 percent of Republicans who said the same about their party leaders, according to the Reuters/Ipsos survey published Thursday.
Nearly half of Democrats—49 percent—are “unsatisfied” with party leaders, while 41 percent say they are “satisfied” and 10 percent are unsure, the poll found.
The poll was released on the same day that news broke of intraparty backlash against Democratic National Committee chairman Ken Martin, with DNC members telling Politico that Martin is “weak,” “whiny,” and “invisible.” Earlier this week, powerful American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten quit her DNC role in protest of the party’s direction under Martin, leading Rep. Mark Pocan (D., Wis.) to tweet that he would “love to have a day go by” without the DNC doing “something embarrassing & off message.”
The Democratic rank-and-file also disagree sharply with their leadership over the party’s priorities, the Thursday poll found. Only 17 percent of Democrats, for example, think that allowing transgender individuals to compete in women’s sports should be a priority for the party.
The party’s approval ratings have been underwater for months, as Democrats struggle to rally behind a national leader and lack a frontrunner in the 2028 primary. The Democratic Party’s favorability has plunged below 30 percent, according to polls earlier this year by CNN and NBC News.
