Democrats failed to keep pace with Republican and Independent voter registration efforts after 2020, significantly eroding their registration advantage and leaving them with a raw numbers deficit.

• Flawed Strategy & Tactical Incompetence
• Voter Registration & Turnout Deficit

• "But the big shift here is that from 2022 to 2024, Democrats lost 205 voters and Republicans added 13,000. Independents grew even larger, 24,000. That's the big shift that we saw. A lot of the registration that was happening in the state was by Republicans."

  1:57 Watch ↗

• "What's really telling is this registration advantage in 2022. This race was incredibly close with Angel and Juan Ciscomani. It was largely in part to this registration advantage of only 19,000. That increased 38% from 2020, going from 22,000 advantage to 30,000 advantage."

  11:54 Watch ↗

Democrats experienced a significant erosion of support in their own traditional strongholds, with vote shares dropping considerably in south and west Tucson districts.

• Neglected Coalition & Demographic Collapse

• "Where you see the big shifts happening is on these south and west side districts of 21, 23, and 20 where 21 drops 4%, 23 drops 5%, and then the a bigger drop here in district 20 dropped 4%. and we're still winning those districts overall, but what's happening is that a portion of those votes are going Republican..."

  8:13 Watch ↗

• "While these precincts here in the south and west side are still Democratic, instead of going 75% Democratic, they're now going 67% or 65% Democratic. So, there is definitely a a GOP shift happening in these areas of town."

  9:58 Watch ↗

Democrats are underutilizing the highly effective 'singleshot' candidate strategy, which consolidates votes and allows candidates to overperform, and should be deployed in more competitive districts.

• Flawed Strategy & Tactical Incompetence

• "But this shows that the singleshot is effective. It is an effective strategy and it should be used in I think probably more of our districts. The districts that had a singleshot, I'm going to start in the upper left here. LD2, LD16, and LD17 all had singleshot candidates."

  16:48 Watch ↗

• "If you look at LD13, which is Maricopa County, look at the distance between where Ruben Ggo performed and our top state house candidate. And that's because there were two candidates there. Not forcing the choice of people."

  19:02 Watch ↗

Democrats failed to effectively counter the Republican 'single-shot' strategy, costing them winnable legislative seats and potentially control of the legislature.

• Flawed Strategy & Tactical Incompetence

• "The other district that we ran two candidates in is LD23. And you can see that there's another big gap between this green Ruben Ggo dot and the state house one dot. And that's because the Republicans did a singleshot strategy. And that siphoned votes away from our purple dot here, which is our state house candidate."

  19:22 Watch ↗

• "in LD23 that district to West Pima County, Yuma, Maricopa. That should be a Democratic seat because the Republicans doing a single shot. And there are opportunities up in Maricopa County. We actually lost I think two or three seats up here where having that single shot, if we had just won one of those, we might be looking at a tied legislature or even a tied Senate."

  29:22 Watch ↗

Democrats lacked an effective counter-strategy to aggressive Republican voter registration campaigns, particularly those targeting young men, while their own allied groups failed to deliver similar results.

• Flawed Strategy & Tactical Incompetence
• Voter Registration & Turnout Deficit

• "The other thing is I don't know if the C3 and C4 groups did a lot of that voter registration that they have done in the past. Charlie Kirk registered a lot of new Republicans. That was a big push here in Arizona, especially among younger males. That led to an increased push where we didn't see that on the Democratic side for whatever reason."

  3:42 Watch ↗

Matching Republican turnout percentages was an insufficient strategy for Democrats because they were overcome by a raw numbers deficit due to lower registration.

• Flawed Strategy & Tactical Incompetence
• Voter Registration & Turnout Deficit

• "Of course, when we look statewide, we saw a similar trend. But because Republicans increased their registration numbers statewide, even if we were matching them in turnout, we we just don't have the raw numbers as the Democrats to overcome that deficit."

  4:50 Watch ↗

Democrats failed to translate a major policy victory on an abortion rights ballot measure (Prop 139) into votes for their candidates, a regression from their successful use of the issue in 2022.

• Flawed Strategy & Tactical Incompetence

• "In 2024, we had the I think it was Prop 139, the enshrining right to an abortion in the Constitution. That was on the ballot. That passed easily, but we didn't see that trickle down to other Democratic candidates. 2024 saw a regression not only from 2022 but from 2020."

  6:29 Watch ↗

The Democratic Party is losing significant support among Hispanic and Latino populations, as evidenced by large performance drops in heavily Latino counties and districts.

• Neglected Coalition & Demographic Collapse

• "Your neighbor to the south, Santa Cruz County, had the biggest shift. Democratic performance presidential dropped I think about 8% from 2020 to 2024 just signaling where the Democratic party is having trouble. A lot of it has to do with Hispanic Latino populations."

  7:08 Watch ↗

Democrats are failing to appeal to rural voters, with their success in urban and suburban areas not translating to rural parts of the state.

• Neglected Coalition & Demographic Collapse

• "But even more and this has been a bigger trend for a longer time is this urban suburban areas where Democrats have been doing well. It's not translating to the rural areas. we are not capturing that that sort of vote."

  7:28 Watch ↗

Democrats lost crucial votes to a third-party Green candidate in a competitive congressional race, which likely impacted the final outcome.

• Flawed Strategy & Tactical Incompetence
• Left-Wing Voter Self-Sabotage

• "Same thing for the Republican all three years, right around that 50% mark, but as you can see, there was a third party green candidate that took votes away from the Democrat more than the Republican. That is very notable having that 2% shift go to a green candidate."

  14:54 Watch ↗

Democrats' core electoral problem in Arizona was not low voter turnout, but rather an insufficient number of registered Democrats to win.

• Flawed Strategy & Tactical Incompetence
• Voter Registration & Turnout Deficit

• "What we saw is that Democratic turnout wasn't the problem. For years, we've had this problem of Democratic turnout where we're just trying to get our voters to the polls. Here, we didn't have enough Democrats to turn out. And that was an opposite problem of what we've had for at least three or four election cycles."

  25:14 Watch ↗

Democrats have failed to keep pace with recent, aggressive Republican voter registration efforts, eroding their numerical advantage.

• Flawed Strategy & Tactical Incompetence
• Voter Registration & Turnout Deficit

• "But since then, it it hasn't changed as much as the Republicans had. The Republicans did lose 1,400 voters in 2022, but they added 4,400 from 2022 to 2024. That's this increase here. Thanks for that. Our understanding has always been we've got a very narrow headway for voter registration, but that shows that the GOP is doing it. So, yes, maybe we ought to look at it again."

  22:18 Watch ↗

Democratic campaigns are likely over-investing in traditional broadcast TV and mail, and need to shift more resources to digital and streaming TV advertising to reach voters where they are.

• Flawed Strategy & Tactical Incompetence
• Flawed Fundraising & Resource Mismanagement
• Flawed Digital & Media Strategy

• "My work at Uplift really revolves around digital ads. What we found is that if you are a congressional candidate, statewide candidate, investing more in digital TV is the way to go. People are cutting their cords. That's not to say ignore mail and broadcast TV, but thinking about other ways of reaching voters is key."

  32:53 Watch ↗

Democrats' digital strategy of hyper-targeted 'one-to-one' advertising is becoming ineffective, and they must shift to casting a wider, broader net online to successfully reach their target voters.

• Flawed Strategy & Tactical Incompetence
• Flawed Digital & Media Strategy

• "The other thing that we're doing, this idea of onetoone targeting, especially on digital ads, it might not be the way to go. We might not be able to match exactly our voters. So, we need to cast a wider net online more broadly. E even if we are reaching voters that we don't necessarily want to contact that aren't getting our mail or a knock on the door, by expanding your universe and not using direct digital matching techniques, you are able to capture more of the voters that you want even though you are including some that you don't."

  33:20 Watch ↗

Democrats are not prioritizing genuine, organic social media content, which is more effective at engaging voters than paid advertising that people are conditioned to ignore.

• Flawed Strategy & Tactical Incompetence
• Flawed Digital & Media Strategy

• "But nothing beats organic content, genuine organic content. You can throw up a paid ad, but people know what an ad looks like. We skip ads all the time."

  35:07 Watch ↗

Democrats' strategy of running two candidates in certain multi-member districts was counterproductive, leading to underperformance compared to running a single 'single-shot' candidate.

• Flawed Strategy & Tactical Incompetence

• "… they are slightly just technically overperforming where Ruben Ggo did by 2%. And this is a state house candidate. They're overperforming what Harris did by almost or 3 and a half%. When you look at districts with two candidates, and of course this includes a lot of our deep blue districts, your LD18, your LD20s, there is a drop off. State House 1 is underperforming the top candidate of GGO and it's only overperforming Harris by just over 2"

  19:42 Watch ↗

Democrats are not sufficiently tailoring their digital advertising channels to specific demographics, missing opportunities for more effective outreach.

• Flawed Strategy & Tactical Incompetence
• Flawed Digital & Media Strategy

• "We actually built a lot of tools to help that based on your audience. For instance, if you're trying to reach Hispanic, Latino populations, YouTube is the way to go. that population watches that channel more than broadcast or CTV …"

  34:16 Watch ↗

Voter dissatisfaction with the Biden administration, particularly regarding high inflation, contributed to an increase in Republican and Independent registration, hurting Democrats.

• Flawed Strategy & Tactical Incompetence
• Voter Registration & Turnout Deficit

• "What caused the spike in GOP registration? Obviously, there is some dissatisfaction with the Biden administration. I think that we have to acknowledge that. While we all in this room recognize the excellent work that they did with the chips act among other things, the prices inflation was pretty wild those last couple years of the term that led to an increase in probably independent and GOP registration."

  3:12 Watch ↗

Democrats are losing registered party members who are switching to Independent, and these disaffected former Democrats are then staying home on election day, contributing to lower overall vote totals.

• Flawed Strategy & Tactical Incompetence
• Voter Registration & Turnout Deficit

• "I think one of the issues might be that those who shifted away even with a small number from Democrat to independent probably stayed away from the vote which probably also registered itself in the lower. Yeah, absolutely. there were fewer voters, turnout was a little bit lower. And when you're looking at a swing state like Arizona, a 2% drop in Democratic turnout, that flips the whole state. So, when we're dealing with such small margins here in Arizona, a small change like that can really move things."

  27:20 Watch ↗

Some Democratic candidates use 'hard progressive' messaging that fails to resonate with key demographics like rural voters and Latino men, unlike more successful, relatable approaches.

• Flawed Strategy & Tactical Incompetence
• Flawed Digital & Media Strategy

• "That really resonated a lot in some of the rural areas obviously a lot with Latino men. They see that they recognize what he's doing and he doesn't speak the hard progressive dem that we see in some of our other candidates."

  32:11 Watch ↗