A progressive donor group is warning candidates that the Democratic brand is dragging them down in key states. The group’s leaders think they have a solution: lean deeper into economic populism and name villains.

Those are two top conclusions from a private poll, shared first with NOTUS, which surveyed Sunbelt voters last month. Much of the findings mirrored public polling: The cost of living dominates voters’ concerns and they’re increasingly frustrated with President Donald Trump’s handling of the economy. But among these battleground and red-state voters, Democrats don’t hold the generic-ballot advantage they have in other national polls.

The progressive donor group Way to Win paid for the research, as its leaders look to push Democratic candidates toward more populist framing ahead of the midterms. The group recently presented the data to staffers for the Democratic Party committees, as well as national and state-based advocacy groups. The group also said it’s planning to hold briefings with Democratic congressional members.

Way to Win’s efforts to push a populist message come as the party continues to wend its way through the political wilderness following sweeping losses in 2024. The data is the latest evidence of how new think tanks, conferences, election postmortems and podcasts are all trying to influence the party’s direction and laying bare their disagreements over how to recover. Progressives, like Rep. Greg Casar of Texas, are also pushing economic populism as their answer to regaining a foothold with working-class voters.

In two-thirds of the issue areas the poll tested, the populist message proved persuasive among these Sunbelt voters, the research found. For example, “requir[ing] big corporations to pay what they owe in taxes” performed better by double digits with unmotivated Democratic voters, battleground district voters and voters who dislike both parties than traditional Democratic messages like cutting “middle-class taxes” or typical Republican ones, like “stop[ping] immigrants from taking American jobs.”

“When you take into account the voters Democrats most need to persuade into their corner to assemble a durable, winning coalition, the cumulative benefit of a more populist message over a conventional Democratic message is clear,” Way to Win co-founder Jenifer Fernandez Ancona said. “The populist message named a clear villain — the ultrarich and big corporations — while the conventional message did not, simply focusing on middle-class tax cuts.”

But there are glaring warning signs for the party in the research, too. The Democratic Party brand is still underwater, even with Trump’s own popularity sinking to all-time lows. Among persuadable voters, the data found, Democrats in Congress are viewed a net 35 percentage points more negatively than the Republicans.

“No question that Democrats need to separate from the party brand. It’s as toxic as it’s ever been,” said Luke Martin, a Democratic pollster who led Way to Win’s research efforts. Successful candidates last election cycle like Sen. Elissa Slotkin, he said, managed to define themselves “as a person, not as a partisan,” and “that’s the reality for candidates in 2026.”

Another “glaring warning sign” comes with Republicans’ potent messaging against Democrats on fraud and government corruption, Martin said, who pointed to the fraud investigation in Minnesota as the latest example of how the issue can be used effectively against Democrats.

In the poll, Martin tested a frequent Republican attack on Democrats — “We need to stop government fraud and overspending” — which was preferred by majorities of Sunbelt voters over the two messages used more frequently by Democrats, which attacked “rich people” for “buying seats” and called for bans on stock trading.

“Neither of the messages hold up against the Republican framing because neither of the Democratic messages are personal,” Martin said. In Way to Win’s memo, the group warned that candidates “clearly needed to build up and refine the economic case for Democrats, especially on narratives about corruption.”