As All Indicators Flash Red, One Thing Is Clear: Democratic Campaign Operatives Need to Watch Fox News

As Republicans regained their midterm election momentum in late September and October, one thing became crystal clear to the pundits and observers closely following the race: Democrats were caught off guard without any effective messaging on how to deal with key issues like crime, securing the southern border, and inflation – three issues on which Fox News has been laser-focused for months.

In today’s day and age, reporters and political operatives not only must contend with understanding all the various factors at play on any given story, they must also master the partisan constructs surrounding any given issue — especially in this day and age when opinion hosts often construct their own realities.

Had the Democrats been watching Fox News, which regularly has the ten highest-rated shows on cable news, they would have clearly understood from the summer that crime and inflation would dominate the closing weeks of this campaign.

The Washington Post’s Phillip Bump took a deep dive in late October into coverage of crime across Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC and found a steep rise in mentions of the issue on Fox News in mid-September, which was then followed weeks later by CNN and MSNBC.

While Bump notes there was no major change in crime data during that period, the uptick in mentions coincided with “the emphasis placed on the subject by the GOP and that’s made it more salient to the election.”

Polling data in the days before the election backed this up. Steve Krakauer broke down some of this data over the weekend, noting:

Crime is a big issue in this election, for both parties. According to a recent Monmouth poll, 89% of Republicans say crime is “extremely” or “very” important for the federal government to address, but so do 75% of Democrats.

More importantly, he added that while some polls show a partisan gap on the importance of crime in determining voting preferences, with Republican-leaning voters ranking the issue very highly and Democrat-leaning voters showing less interest, the issue still raises red flags for Democrats, especially with key demographics.

Krakauer cited last week’s Pew poll and noted that “if you just look at Black voters, that percentage goes up to 81%. A higher percentage of Black voters than GOP-aligned voters say crime is an important factor in their vote.”

This statistic is a glaring example of how badly Democrats dropped the ball on this issue. New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D) told Al Sharpton in late October that the crime issue was a media fabrication.

“These are master manipulators. They have this conspiracy going all across America trying to convince people in Democratic states that they’re not as safe,” Hochul told Sharpton on his radio program. Finding herself in a closer-than-expected reelection bid, Hochul has since backed down from that claim and said, “I acknowledge there is a crime issue… I’ve been working on this throughout my entire time as governor.”

During those remarks from last week, Hochul embraced New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who ran to the right on crime in 2021 and beat a slate of progressive Democrats to become mayor – a reminder that the Democrats should have anticipated a fight on this issue from the start of this election cycle.

On the economy, Fox News hammered away at inflation and rising prices for gas and other everyday essentials for much of 2022.

Bump again quantified Fox News’s coverage of these topics, explaining:

From the spring through the summer, crime didn’t come up much. Mentions of “gas” and “fuel” were much more common. Then gas prices peaked and mentions fell. A few weeks later, mentions of both crime and gas increased, but only mentions of crime have kept rising.

On Monday, Third Way, a center-left Democratic think tank, published a blistering survey result noting that “Democrats are underwater on issues voters name as their highest priorities, including the economy, immigration, and crime, they are perceived as distant from the electorate ideologically, and voters question whether the party shares essential values like patriotism and the importance of hard work.”

The survey of 800 likely voters nationwide found that inflation and the economy are by far the most important issues for voters and that most voters trust Republicans to better manage both.

“When asked which party would do a better job handling each issue, Republicans hold a decisive advantage (54%-36%) on inflation and the economy. A majority of voters (53%) also worry that continued Democratic control of Congress will make inflation worse,” the poll’s summary reads. The organization concluded by blasting Democrats as “out of touch” on key issues and noted that “If Democrats manage to hold on to the House and Senate, it will be in spite of the party brand, not because of it.”

While Democrats had focused much of their election messaging on federal abortion rights, election denialism, Jan. 6, and the “threat” Republicans pose to democracy, they forgot to craft meaningful messaging to counter their opposition and the headwinds brought on by historic inflation and other worrying economic indicators.

And while many may argue, like Hochul did, that doom and gloom regarding crime, inflation, or the surge in border crossing may be greatly exaggerated on the right, this is a campaign year and the Democrats should have been ready to counter those narratives – especially when they control the White House, the largest megaphone on the planet.

Moreover, Democrats always knew these midterms would be difficult as the incumbent president’s party is often punished at the ballot box; the races in 2021, the first test of Biden’s lackluster popularity rating, offered dire indications of what was coming.

Democrats lost the Virginia gubernatorial race in 2021 based largely on issues like government overreach, school closures, and fury over Critical Race Theory – an issue championed by right-wing media that has since all but evaporated from the political discourse.

Many assumed after their shellacking in Virginia that Democrats would go back to the drawing board and work to win back suburban voters. Instead, almost the opposite has happened as new polling shows white suburban women abandoning the Democratic Party in droves.

One can only hope that if a red wave does come crashing down on top of the Democrats in 2022, the party will begin to do some soul-searching – starting with understanding what is being said on Fox News.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.