The term “80/20 issues” has been in the news in 2025, particularly if you watch conservative media programs or read conservative articles related to politics. The term refers to the fact that on many of the top issues that voters identify as important, around 80% of voters favor the position(s) held by Republicans and only around 20% support the position(s) held by Democrats. This has been holding true for about a year or more on issues like crime and punishment, border control and immigration, first amendment rights versus censorship and cancel culture, biological men in women’s locker rooms and/or playing women’s sports, energy independence, and educational issues like parents’ right and school choice.
Obviously it depends how a question is phrased when polling, but polls have consistently shown GOP advantages on all of the above. This does not portend well for Democrats, though the congressional midterm elections of 2026 are still over a year away. It is impossible to predict what will be top of mind for voters in the fall 2026.
Still, there are just a scant few signs Democrats understand their predicament of being so out of touch, a view which confounds many political analysts. Democrat congressional leaders and big state governors in particular appear to be a holding to a “if Trump is for it, then I am against it” mantra. Quieter voices are emerging though.
The New Democrat Coalition, which comprises 115 members spanning the caucus’s ideological spectrum, released a framework on August 25th with policy proposals that include bolstering funding and operational support to border agents and toughening U.S. visa policies. One would certainly think Democrats would want to follow in the success of two of their own flipped GOP seats in New York in 2024.
Rep. Tom Suozzi’s message was strict border security enforcement that included deporting criminals and closing the border temporarily to asylum seekers. He won early in 2024. Rep. Laura Gillen ran on a similar platform andsuccessfully flipped another GOP district in Long Island in November. But these more hardline positions are well outside mainstream Democrat thinking and messaging, and neither was mentioned by the Harris campaign.
University of Chicago Professor Charles Lipson explained President Trump’s brilliance on 80/20 issues in a June 2025 article in The Spectator World. Knowing how much Democrats and progressives absolutely detest him and anything he stands for, Trump essentially traps them. “The irony here is that Trump is working in tandem with the Democrats’ far-left wing. On issue after issue, the Democrats’ progressive base supports the 20 percent side and damns anyone who opposes them. Trump has capitalized on their position and opposed it so vocally that center-left Democrats fear they will be labeled as ‘Trump appeasers’ if they don’t side with the progressives.”
So, for now at least, Republicans enjoy being on the right side of a plethora of national issues on which voters say they care the most, and Democrats, for the most part, are to be counted on to take the losing side on them all.
