Three years ago, I wrote a post about the worst political issue for the GOP and the Democrats. After investigating the topic, I focused on balanced budges for the GOP and gun control for the Democrats.

What made those issues stand out is that there’s a wide gap between generic voters preferences and how strongly voters feel about the issues. Voters like balanced budgets in the abstract. But as soon as you turn to tax increases or spending cuts – how you balance budgets in the first place – voters are far less interested. And while many people like gun control, most have no direct experience with actual gun violence.

But it’s 3 years later. Let’s check in to see whether they’ve learned anything.

GOP: Yes, Democrats: No

The short answer is that the GOP has learned far more than the Democrats. Ultimately, this isn’t why Trump defeated Harris in the 2024 election. But it certainly helped.

The GOP finally figured out that the vast majority of Americans simply don’t give a shit about balanced budgets. Even when they say they do. This is why Trump, as soon as he saw the opportunity to take power, proposed to eliminate the debt ceiling.

Trump correctly perceived that debt and spending are simply partisan political tools. More broadly, the GOP has learned to pretend to care about debt when Democrats hold power. But they, of course, immediately set these concerns aside when they hold power. That’s not great for the state of political discourse, but it’s smart partisan politics.

On the other side, Democrats still seem to have little idea how to interpret popular opinion. They oddly lurched to the right in the 2024 election, especially on issues of war and immigration. But this served only to annoy certain parts of their base without winning over anyone new.

A better strategy would’ve been to reconsider which issues they put out front and center. Rather than holding an election about immigration, stepping into GOP frames, they should’ve centered bold proposals on health care and jobs.

At the end of the day, the Democrats seem much less better equipped at building large coalitions on the basis of simple, easy to understand themes.

That cost them in 2024.