Voters who picked AOC and Trump are telling us something ...

I know I’m not the only person who has had my fill of rapid-fire forensics in the wake of last week’s election. The response from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., did catch my eye, though, because rather than just spout a hot take on Donald Trump’s victory, she used her Instagram platform to talk to voters themselves. What she heard offers some bracing lessons for the Democratic Party. 

Ocasio-Cortez is one of the Democrats from across the country who performed better than Vice President Kamala Harris in districts where voters appeared to approach the ballot with an a la carte sensibility. That is, they voted across party lines and supported candidates who seemed to have diametrically opposing agendas. A member of the left-leaning group of members of Congress known as “the squad,” Ocasio-Cortez was surprised to see her New York 14th congressional district swing heavily toward Trump even as voters there showed strong support for her candidacy. In 2020, Trump won 22% of the vote in AOC’s district compared to Joe Biden’s 77%. Harris did not fare nearly as well. Support for Trump jumped to 33%, and support for Harris dropped to 65%.  

Support for Trump jumped to 33%, and support for Harris dropped to 65%.

Ocasio-Cortez, who has always shown both comfort and skill in deploying social media to communicate directly with her 8.1 million followers, turned her camera on herself and in a video said, “Let’s do this right now. If you voted for Donald Trump and me, or if you voted for Donald Trump and voted Democratic down the ballot, I would really love to hear from you.” 

She noted that this is “not a place of judgment” and said she was “not gonna, like put your stuff on blast or anything like that or dunk on it.” She said, “I actually want to learn from you, I want to hear what you were thinking” as she invited people to respond to her Instagram questionnaire.

While it is not the most sophisticated method of surveying voters, the responses were swift and candid: 

“I feel you are both outsiders compared to the rest of DC, and less “establishment” “…wanted change so I went with Trump and blue for the rest of the ballot to put some brakes”“…both of you push boundaries and force growth”“It’s real simple … Trump and you care for the working class”“I feel like Trump and you are both real”“You are focused on the real issues people care about. Similar to Trump populism in some ways”“…you signaled change. Trump signified change. I’ve said lately, Trump sounds more like you.”
 

Though I haven’t spoken with Rep. Ocasio-Cortez,  I imagine it may have given the working-class progressive politician vertigo to hear some of her constituents say they saw little daylight between her and the wealthy candidate who promises to carry out mass deportations and impose blanket tariffs on all imports. But there is a message as well for Democrats — an unwelcome one, given that Harris’ winning margin even in New York was smaller than Biden’s was four years ago.

And there are questions that need answering: If given more time, could Harris, who ran a strong campaign, have developed a deeper connection with working-class voters? Did the answers voters gave Ocasio-Cortez or to more scientific polls during the election cycle mask some discomfort people had with the rapid browning of America and with electing a Black and South Asian woman to the nation’s highest office? After almost a full decade of consistently running for office, did Trump just have a natural built-in advantage because of greater name recognition?

What’s clear is that Trump has used all that time running for office to tell a story that spoke directly to the fears of people on the lower rungs of the economic ladder — voters who live in a different world  than his gilded universe. He promised to make life safer, more affordable and even more recognizable as he and Republicans railed against “they/them” pronouns and diversity initiatives they claimed had run rampant.

One of the voters responding to Ocasio-Cortez said of Harris: “She was more for rights than the economy.” 

It didn’t matter that Trump didn’t offer much in the way of specific policies to guarantee an improved economy or to lower the price of eggs, bacon or housing. Even as he rambled off course at his rallies, he kept returning to a message about safety and economic security, and he created an impression that he was looking out for the average person’s kitchen table concerns. In the stories he told, he cast himself as the hero and identified a long list of villains to stoke a reliable gust of grievances from people who feel like they live at America’s margins. In his grim fairytale, the villainous forces included a bloated government, out-of-touch Democrats and immigrants stealing the jobs from and poisoning the blood of “true” Americans. Exit polls suggest that even some significant share of immigrants who voted didn’t want “those people” jumping ahead of them in line or gumming up their chances to be seen and embraced by real America.

It’s worth considering that many of those people who wanted change saw voting for Harris — Biden’s vice president — as likely to leave them stuck in place.

The voters who responded to AOC also spoke of stagnation and the war in Gaza, but the prevailing sentiments were rooted in looking for someone who made them feel seen, valued and understood. Democrats were betting that voters would be repulsed by the GOP’s war on abortion and Trump’s relentless focus on mass deportations and threats of retribution. They hoped that warnings about fascism and racism and authoritarian tendencies would produce indigestion. Instead, it often led to indifference toward Harris and the Democrats. An NPR/PBS/Maris poll earlier this year found 56% of Republicans and even 28% of Democrats agreed that “America has gotten so far off track that we need a leader who is willing to break some rules to set things right.” 

It’s worth noting that many people who say they wanted change embraced that same old retrograde Make America Great Again slogan and voted to return Trump to the White House. But even stepping backward is a kind of change, and it’s worth considering that many of those people who wanted change saw voting for Harris — Biden’s vice president — as likely to leave them stuck in place.

A simple survey like Ocasio-Cortez’s can’t possibly capture why people prioritized the price of groceries over warnings about fascism, or ignored the open embrace of white supremacy from a candidate who openly threatened to undermine American democracy. To understand that behavior, Democrats are going to have to find a taproot to the voting populace that goes beyond traditional polls and focus groups. Instagram surveys are obviously not the full answer, but AOC’s social media experiment should not be ignored. 

Democrats are now entering a period of reinvention and resistance, and they have to figure out how to do both things fast … and both things well. And that means figuring out how to listen to voters who did not want the policies or the candidate they were selling.

Michele Norris

Michele Norris is a Senior Contributing Editor for MSNBC and the author of "Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think About Race & Identity."