The Bronx and Queens Democrat, who was easily re-elected Tuesday, quizzed her 8 million Instagram followers in hopes of learning more about Dem Vice President Kamala Harris’ landslide loss to the Republican former president, which stunned pollsters and Democratic Party bosses alike.
“It’s really simple… trump and you care for the working class,” said one respondent, reflecting the massive shift toward the Republican Party among non-college-educated voters since 2016.
Another person wrote, “[W]anted change so I went with Trump and blue for the rest of the ballot to put some breaks.”
A third respondent described the trade-off between a split-ticket vote and party-line Democratic vote.
“Action & Progress >> Stagnation & Excuses,” the person wrote. “Both of you push boundaries and force growth.”
Another writer said, “Voted Trump, but I like you & Bernie. I don’t trust either party establishment politicians.”
A senior Democratic aide on Capitol Hill, asked by The Post about the results of AOC’s informal survey, said, “If either party wants a sweep, they have to figure out how to harvest authenticity.
“That’s who wins. Trump is authentic. Harris was grown in a lab. People can tell,” the source said.
Socialist Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was one of the first progressive pols to offer the Democratic Party a post-mortem.
“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working-class people would find that the working class has abandoned them,” said Sanders, who caucuses with the Democrats.
AOC’s 14th District swung to President-elect Trump by one of the highest margins among Big Apple voters.
In 2020, nearly four out of five voters (77%) voted for Joe Biden, and 22% cast ballots for Trump. But in 2024, just 65% voted for Harris, and 33% voted for Trump, according to city voting records reported by the Daily Kos show.
In 2018, Ocasio-Cortez, now a close ally of Sanders, said she had won election while Trump was in office by sticking to “a laser-focused message of economic, social and racial dignity for working-class Americans.”
In 2020, nearly four out of five voters (77%) voted for Joe Biden, and 22% cast ballots for Trump. But in 2024, just 65% voted for Harris, and 33% voted for Trump, according to city voting records reported by the Daily Kos show.
Both the congresswoman and the senator still endorsed and stumped for Harris in 2024.
Democratic sources spilled to The Post the day after the 2024 election that Harris’ platform had heavily relied on its elite pool of donors, shifting its messaging in the final weeks to pillory Trump, 78, as a “fascist” threat to American democracy.
That entirely ignored voters’ concerns about inflation, unchecked immigration and other working-class concerns.
Harris, 60, also flip-flopped or failed to clarify where she stood on many of her past progressive stances such as banning fracking for oil and natural gas, decriminalizing illegal border crossings and the approving of sex-change operations for incarcerated migrants.
A post-election survey by the Democratic firm Blueprint shows that the top three reasons the vice president lost to Trump were rising inflation, too many migrants coming into the country and the Democratic nominee’s hyperfixation on “cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class.”
“She was more for rights then [sic] the economy & when she talked ab it she didn’t have a plan,” an Instagram respondent told AOC.
The senior Democratic congressional aide told The Post that the messaging misses made it easy for Trump to beat Harris.