Poll: Dem voters think party out of touch, yet united

You might not be surprised to hear that a majority of Americans think that President Donald Trump is out of touch with the concerns of most people in the United States.

You certainly wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there’s a broad partisan split on the question.

Only 1 in 10 who voted for Trump thinks he’s out of touch — but 90 percent of Hillary Clinton voters do. Twenty percent of Republicans and 87 percent of Democrats hold that position.

On the question of the Republican Party, 62 percent of Americans and 30 percent of Republicans themselves think that the GOP is out of touch with the concerns of most people in the United States.

But none of this means that Democrats are seen as echoing the concerns of the common person. As a matter of fact, the Democratic Party is viewed as more out of touch than either Trump or the party’s political opponents. Two-thirds of Americans, including nearly half of Democrats themselves, think the Democrats are out of touch.

It’s worth highlighting that last point.

While the political opposition generally views Trump or either party as about equally out of touch — with about 80 to 90 percent saying so — the Democratic Party is viewed as far more out of touch by Democrats than Trump or the GOP are by Republicans.

Last week, The Washington Post noted that Trump’s party is seen as more divided than the opposition, according to data from the Pew Research Center. Sixty-eight percent of Americans think the Republican Party is more divided than united, including 57 percent of Republicans. Most Democrats, by contrast, say their party is united.

How does that comport with the findings from the Post-ABC poll? It’s tricky to determine, but one way may be that a large chunk of Democrats feel that their party is united in a vision ... that’s at odds with the concerns of the American public. That would align with the main tension in the party, between the vision of supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders and that of Clinton backers — which came to light during last year’s Democratic primary.

Some portion of this, too, is probably a function of Clinton’s loss in November (as is the shift in how people say they would have changed their vote).

But it’s clear that the Democratic Party is cognizant, to some extent, of the discontent at the grass roots. When Tom Perez, the newly elected leader of the party, headed out on a listening tour this month, he brought along a special guest: Sanders.