Voters Demand a Bolder and More Progressive Democratic Party

“I no longer believe in the Democratic Party,” says Kylie Sparks, a Los Angeles–based actor, writer, and organizer. Sparks volunteered for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in 2012 and worked on Hillary Clinton’s influencer squad in 2016, drumming up support for the candidate via their personal social media accounts. “I think the Democrats need to evolve or let the progressive wing take over because it’s clear that people want progressive politics.”

The Democratic Party suffered major losses in the November 2024 election, which saw Donald Trump elected for a second term and the Republican Party win majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. Since then, the party has seen its popularity sink to an all-time low as voters demand their Democratic representatives take more action against the Trump administration’s overreaches. Instead, much of the party leadership continues to play nice with the president.

Still, a new vision for the Democratic Party’s future, backed by organizers like Sparks, seems to be emerging from its progressive contingents. That vision could appeal to voters in the coming elections, after many have grown disillusioned with Democratic Party leadership in recent years.

While news headlines following Trump’s election win last year painted a grim picture for progressives, the popularity of progressive ballot measures in Republican and Democratic-led states and the success of left-leaning candidates at the state and local levels tell a different tale. For years, polling data has also shown that a majority of Americans, Democrats and Republicans alike, support progressive policies, such as Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and getting money out of politics.

Anger among Democratic voters nationwide over the Trump administration’s agenda and Democrats’ unwillingness to act as a bulwark against its overreaches also points to a growing desire for alternatives to the old guard. A series of “Hands Off” demonstrations organized to protest the Trump administration’s actions drew an estimated 3 to 5 million people in more than 1,400 locations across all 50 states on April 5, 2025. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have also drawn tens of thousands on stops for their Fighting Oligarchy tour, which Sanders launched following Trump’s re-election. Many of those rallies have drawn larger crowds than any other event currently being held by Democrats.

Rallying cries on the Fighting Oligarchy tour go beyond frustration with the Trump administration and include calls for progressive policies such as universal healthcare and wealth taxation. These more progressive ideas resonate with voters who were fed up with the Democratic Party even before Trump’s re-election because they felt Democratic leaders were not doing enough to protect abortion rights, bring down the costs of living, address police violence against communities of color, mitigate the effects of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, or moderate Israel’s assault on Gaza.

Sparks is among those who began losing faith in the party years ago. “One of the things that really radicalized me was the pandemic,” they say. Sparks lives with chronic illness, and their mother is disabled, making COVID-19 a particular threat. When Joe Biden was inaugurated in January 2021, he promised to prioritize protecting Americans from the virus. Instead, Sparks found the government’s response insufficient. “They weren’t doing much, [and] a lot of my friends were forced to go back to work, and they got sick, and some of them have either passed or have lifelong disability issues because of it,” Sparks says.

For Rebecca June Lane, a New York City–based Democratic voter, Democratic leaders’ waffling on reproductive rights has been a disappointment for years. Lane says she began to follow politics more closely in the early 2010s, when anti-choice bills in state legislatures were making headlines, and “the Democratic Party at that time wasn’t even there.” She welcomed Hillary Clinton’s commitment to protecting abortion rights when she ran for president in 2016. “I respected Hillary a lot because she stood 10 toes down about late-term abortions and the medical necessity of those all the way through the debates,” says Lane, who also worked as a video editor for Clinton’s campaign once she became the Democratic nominee.

Biden, on the other hand, offered only lukewarm support for abortion on the campaign trail in both 2020 and 2024, while disclosing that he personally opposes the medical procedure. Lane was disappointed when he became the Democratic Party’s nominee for a second time last year. When Biden stepped down and Vice President Kamala Harris took his place, “There was hope; there was some momentum,” recalls Lane. “But that died as soon as it became clear that Kamala’s platform was Biden’s platform.”

Many voters were also disappointed that Biden remained committed to growing police forces nationwide and invested federal funds in militarized police training facilities, often called “cop cities,” during his term, despite being elected on the tail of the 2020 nationwide protests sparked by the police murder of George Floyd. 

The Biden administration’s support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which began in October 2023, was also a deal-breaker for many. “Anybody with their right mind would not go back to the Democrats, because they have not shown any change,” Farah Khan, co-chair of the Abandon Harris campaign in Michigan and a former Democrat, told NBC News after Harris made clear she would continue Biden’s pro-Israel politics and refused to meaningfully engage with voters concerned about conditions in Gaza. “They’re going to have to work really, really hard to win their votes back.”

Democratic voters who have grown tired of the status quo on these issues are finding hope in a growing wave of progressive grassroots candidates seeking election. “​​We have seen a huge surge in people raising their hands to say they want to run in just the last six months,” says Amanda Litman, co-founder and president of Run for Something, an organization that recruits and supports young progressive candidates running in down-ballot races.

Since Trump’s re-election, more than 40,000 people have signed up to attend one of Run for Something’s candidate calls to learn about running a campaign and the support the organization can provide. That’s more new sign-ups in about six months than what Run for Something saw in the first two years of Trump’s first term. “There’s a sense of fury, rage, disappointment, and a little bit of hope” among those who join the candidate calls, says Litman. “They are seeing other people step up to run and lead in this moment, and it’s inspiring them to do the same.”

Some districts long-held by conventionalist Democrats are already staring down primary opponents running on more progressive platforms. No candidate is more famous than Kat Abughazaleh, the 24-year-old content creator turned politician who is running in Illinois’s 9th Congressional District, where longtime Rep. Jan Schakowsky announced unexpectedly on May 5 that she would not run for reelection. “Donald Trump and Elon Musk are dismantling our country piece by piece, and so many Democrats seem content to just sit back and let them,” Abughazaleh said in a campaign launch announcement. “While current Democratic leadership might be fine cowering to Trump, I’m not.”

Zohran Kwame Mamdani, a 33-year-old New York state assembly member from Queens, is also making waves with his campaign for mayor in New York City. Mamdani is running as a socialist on a platform that promises to make the city more affordable for working people. It’s a significant change of pace in a race typically dominated by real estate and finance money and won by party insiders—and it’s resonating with voters. 

Young people have been at the forefront of political change in the U.S. for years. Now, Litman says they are stepping up to lead progressive efforts in record numbers after many turned away from Democrats in the most recent election. “The thing that really makes this moment different is that there is so much interest in not waiting to be given permission,” she says. “A really common theme we have heard from folks on our candidate calls is that they are done waiting for someone else to do the work for them.” Run for Something expects to work with about 300 candidates this year and at least double that in 2026 when midterm elections are held. 

Young people are also shaking up the Democratic National Convention (DNC), with David Hogg, a 25-year-old political organizer and survivor of the 2018 Parkland high school shooting, winning a bid to become DNC Vice Chair in February 2025. Hogg also founded Leaders We Deserve, a grassroots political organization that helps elect young progressives to Congress and state houses nationwide. The organization has committed to challenging more than a dozen Democratic incumbents in the 2026 midterms, which has drawn both ire from party leadership and critique from some on the left who think Hogg’s agenda does not go far enough

Besides welcoming a new wave of progressive challengers in elections at every level, disillusioned Democratic voters are also getting involved in other political arenas, such as labor unions and mutual aid efforts. “I think for progressive politics to really win, we have to start local,” says Sparks, who organizes with the American actors’ union SAG-AFTRA and volunteered on Nithya Raman and Gina Viola’s campaigns for local government in Los Angeles in 2020 and 2022, respectively.

Lane, the New Yorker, says she hopes the despair and frustration that many left-leaning Americans are experiencing now will lead them to think big. “I truly believe that we should not be hampered by the restrictions of where we are right now, but we need to take bold steps,” she says. “I see this on the other side in terms of marching toward fascism, and I want that boldness on the left to march away from fascism.”