I have heard many arguments about why Kamala Harris and the Democrats lost the 2024 election. While I do believe that it is due to a variety of reasons, I want to highlight inefficiency in national, long-term campaigning. Democrats are not willing to go after every opportunity in front of them, and aren’t willing to target every demographic and community. Putting all of your resources into the important swing states may not be the most effective method, as you’re leaving other influential areas off the table, and those areas could be prone to shift right. You could also be missing out on local and state elections that are deeply important to people’s livelihoods, democracy, and our future.

A common complaint from local party organizers and online posters is that national Democrats only seem to come around when there’s an election, along with accompanying fundraising texts and requests for canvassers. While some efforts are made to build organizations, too often Democratic operatives are using antiquated methods and do not understand the political geography at hand.

In 2020, polls and precinct data showed that minorities like Hispanics and Asians shifted toward Republicans. While Joe Biden did win that election, he should have done considerably better if he was just able to hold the line with these groups, yet Democrats did nothing.

If Democrats don’t adjust, they run the risk of losing touch with “the people”, as well as essentially not contesting important local and state elections where they can make a difference. Political geography also has implications for primaries and candidate selection; in some areas, Democrats do not fund or assist progressive candidates, while in others they run candidates who are poor fits for their districts. At the local level, mayors, city officials and boards can help implement policies in a more responsive way.

Right now, the national Democratic Party is underperforming its potential because of a few reasons. The party has been consistently unpopular for years, with the party reaching a new low in March of 2025. Only 27% of people actually approve of the party, and that includes many Democrats who are unsatisfied with how the party is reacting (or lack of a reaction) to Trump. In addition to Trump, the national party does not react to trends quickly enough. In 2024, the same trend was showing, yet Democrats dug their head in the sand, and pretended this issue didn’t exist. One other area would be social media. Republicans gained with Gen Z mostly because of platforms like TikTok, and using young people’s self-consciousness against the Democrats (“woke issues”). It’s not as if the Republicans have drastically better favorable or fundamentals; in 2024 we saw that people just plain don’t like Democrats.

And yet, I do believe that the party’s policies don’t need to change dramatically. Gallup Polls say that the public aligns themselves with Democrats policies when it comes to LGBTQ+ rights, abortion, and healthcare. The real issue is how the Democratic Party runs itself, and how they run campaigns. In one word: they’re inefficient. If I were to equate it to sports, they need to be playing Moneyball, and use every tool, exploit, and opportunity to their advantage. I firmly believe that this is the most effective way for a party to run a national campaign, is by not running a national campaign at all, but by many local and regional campaigns.

So what is the solution then? One of the most popular solutions to this problem is called the 50 State Solution. It’s the idea that a party should be competitive and campaign in all 50 states (and DC), regardless of how close they are to winning elections. This is a pretty solid strategy, as it can help win more local and state elections that, as we’ve established, can actually help the parties nationwide. I think this comes with one main flaw: states are not equally proportioned. Vermont has 650,000 people, while California has 60 times the amount of people. So, your next thought then would be some kind of county strategy. Let’s call it the 3,144 County Strategy, how it rolls off the tongue. The main flaw for me in this strategy, which also applies to the state strategy, is that it’s kind of hard to equally analyze each county. LA County has 10 million people, and is one of the diverse places in the US. How could you realistically come up with just one tidy plan for the whole county? This also applies for places like NYC, Chicago, Detroit, and Philadelphia.

This is where my solution comes in: I call it the 100K Strategy. I divided every state (and DC) into areas of roughly 100,000 people, and made each district based on a few different factors. These factors include ethnicity, education, voting habits, and population density. In total, there are about 3,400 districts, so just a few hundred more than the counties in the US. These statistics are compiled with 2020 US Census Data, so there could have been some demographic changes, but the effects are likely minor. I would break the benefits of these districts down into two separate parts: past analysis, and future planning.

These districts are considerably more optimized for analysis, as similar voting groups are put together. I would go as far as to say that under this plan, you can equally divide resources 3,400 ways between each district, and try to have a catered strategy, identity, and messaging for each one. For example, if a district is very religious, its residents may care more about values that cater to their religion, while a poorer district may care more about the economy and the cost of living. This strategy would allow the Democrats to react to trends much quicker, and be able to easily adapt their messaging depending on the district. At its core, the national party would have a certain set of policies most districts would follow, but most of the other things, like messaging, would be up to the local districts.

This analysis can also be viewed as a kind of segmented exit poll; we can see which areas Dems were truly losing in without resorting to minute precinct data that would be impossible to compile. For example, by averaging all of the districts by ethnicity, I can tell you that Hispanic districts shifted right by 15 points, which tracks with basic exit polls done on election day. I can also tell you how each ethnicity turned out, and that most minority groups also turned out at lower rates than in 2020, while white areas turned out pretty much the same.

District Information

Here is a map of the US, split into 100K districts. The color is based on how they voted in 2020, as not every state has 2024 information quite yet. I would also recommend looking at the Tabula America Index, which color codes each district by ethnicity, density, and education. You can find that here. All maps and data were created and taken from Redistricter.

If you also want raw data about each of the districts, I’ve created a spreadsheet which you can find here.

Be More in Touch with Local Politics

As I said in the introduction, I suggest that the national party should practically not run a national campaign, but a lot of little grassroots campaigns divided up by population. This not only can help make the Democratic machine more efficient with messaging and responses, but also assist local and state elected officials, who in turn can help the national party and candidates back. I will point out that certain figures in the Democratic party, such as Andy Beshear and Tim Walz realize this and are stressing the importance, but I still would like to see the party as a whole be more in touch with local politics.

You may think that an election for a mayor’s race in Oklahoma may not affect you (unless you happen to live there), but this isn’t true. Indirectly at least, these officials can help get your preferred candidate elected President, and help control the House and Senate. First, if Democratic candidates overperform in special elections as well as state and local elections, it can give the sense of strength among the base. For instance, in April of 2025, Democrats overperformed by double digits in three special elections, which gave the base hope after the defeats in 2024. As one Dem operative told me, “Perception is reality in politics.”

Secondly, the more Democrats that are in control of local and state politics, the more resources that are available to the national party. They will have more access to information, and more effective means to distribute resources. Finally, if Democratic candidates can overperform in local/county/state elections, they can actually make the electorate in national elections more Democratic, in a sense. If a Democratic official is in charge of a county, they can (or really should) add more voting locations, and if they are in charge of a state, increase the accessibility of voting. This can be things like extending early voting, making it easier to vote by mail and absentee, and increasing the funding for the state’s election department. This by no means has to come at the expense of “the integrity of the elections”, just look at Florida.

The main reason why Democrats would want to make it easier to vote, is that most likely, the areas which have a lot of minorities in urban areas have a much harder time voting than white and rural areas. While minority voters probably have legitimate reservations about voting, it’s also that certain laws and practices in states purposely make it more difficult for the less educated and minorities to vote. The Brennan Institute noted that “Using county-level turnout data around the country, researchers demonstrated that the racial turnout gap grew when states enacted strict voter ID laws.” They also point out that “Our report from 2020 indicates that voters of color around the country reported longer wait times in the 2018 midterms, using self-reported wait times from a national survey.” Put simply, if Democrats can get in charge of these big counties, they can make it easier for voters who would vote for them to vote, and if they’re already in charge of these counties or states, they need to be taking steps to make it simpler.

Past Analysis

One thing I personally think that is overlooked when it comes to analysis is turnout. Take a look at one part of my spreadsheet, where I average all of the districts by ethnicity. Do you notice that even though Democrats still comfortably win minority groups, that turnout among those groups is significantly lower than white people?

In 2024, Democrats won Hispanic majority districts only by 4,000 votes on average. While yes, this was in part because of the massive shift towards Republicans in these areas, it’s not like it was all that high in 2016. As a comparison, Democrats won Majority White, Majority Bachelor’s Degree areas by 24 points, and Dems won Hispanics by 42 points. While on the surface, you’d be inclined to think Dems got more votes out of Hispanic areas, you’d be wrong, because turnout was only 33% in Hispanic areas, compared to 56% for white, educated areas. Dems got 12,000 votes on average in my 100K districts in white educated areas, while Dems only got 10,000 votes out of Hispanic areas. In addition, turnout dropped significantly more among minority communities in 2024 than white communities.

Just to illustrate how important I believe maximizing turnout in heavy Dem areas are, I made a formula that would make every district have the same amount of turnout in 2020. I used the average turnout rate, which was 60%, and simply calculated the raw margins of every 100K district if everywhere turned out the same. As an example, we’ll be using Dallas, Texas to illustrate how much of an impact this made. In 2020, Dems won Dallas, albeit by only a few percentage points, thanks to winning Tarrant County, and reducing margins in Collin and Denton counties.

However, if you were to take a look at turnout in the Dallas area, you’d see that these heavy Dem areas actually correlate fairly well with low turnout areas. The dark brown is about 30% turnout, the purple turnout is about 70%, and of course the lighter colors are somewhere in between.

Now why is this? What do low-turnout areas look like? As I said earlier, it basically can come down to ethnicity. These lower turnout areas correlate heavily with areas that have a lot of Black and Hispanic people. Why is it that they have such bad turnout rates? Besides what I mentioned in the previous section, I can give you some theories. They may see the government as corrupt/untrustworthy, they may feel that neither party has their best interests at heart, there could be a language barrier, and they simply don’t find national politics important.

Finally, I want to show you how many MORE votes Democrats could have gotten if all districts turned out at an average rate.

The dark blue areas are 10K-15K extra votes for Dems, and I estimate Dems could have gotten 100,000 extra votes in Dallas alone. Now, is it possible that if these minority areas turned out higher, the margins for Dems wouldn’t be quite as good? Of course, and I wouldn’t discount that happening. However, strategy in these areas has to change, because turnout went down hard in these areas from 2020-2024, and on top of that, Hispanics have shifted 20-30 points towards Republicans since 2016.

Future Planning

Finally, I want to go over an example of using the 100K strategy, for 2026 for the Democrats. The first thing that should happen right after the previous election (aka now), is that operatives/local officials should go out into each district, and find out what exactly the district is like. Although we have basic information, it still is pertinent to find out what issues are important in each of the districts, as well as stuff like religious affiliation, hobbies, what kind of media they consume, and other psychographic information we can’t get otherwise. This is all important because all of this matters to how people vote. This work would probably be assigned between 3-10 members/volunteers in each district.

Once that would be compiled, each district, along with the national party, can create tailored strategies. using the information gathered. Just as an example, even if a district is white, educated, and urban, it can be vastly different depending if it’s Mormon, Catholic, non-religious, or Southern Baptist. Ideally during this step, we’d also start to search for candidates that best match the state/district identity. Even if most Democratic elected officials generally agree on the same policies, people vote for Democrats for vastly different reasons.

Once it comes time for the months and weeks leading up to the election, we would have operatives in every district seeing what people are saying, what the vibes are, and what issues become important. While planning is important, you also have to be willing to adapt if priorities change for voters. Ideally, we would split resources pretty evenly between each district, and they can choose what to do with that money. If the most important race is a statewide senate race, great, but if the most winnable race is a local house representative election, they also should be empowered to spend money there.

The point really is to run a bottom up, more grassroots campaign, in order to ensure that we are the party in touch, and that we know what the people are saying. While society is more online now than ever, that doesn’t mean that local politics doesn’t matter, I’d argue they matter just as much now as they did 100 years ago. While I have seen Ken Martin, the new DNC chair commit to some strategies like this, I worry that there will still be inefficiencies within the party. You can’t simply just assume that the tide will turn and just ride the wave, you have to control the waves yourself.