Democrats are rethinking ways to recapture voters they've lost to President Trump in recent election cycles, and they may have been offered an important lesson in the New York mayoral primary.

In various post-mortems and focus groups done on the heels of their devastating 2024 election loss, Democrats have thoroughly examined exit polls and voter demographics in search of the gaps in their party’s appeal.

But Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha, who served as a senior adviser on Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) presidential campaign in 2020, said Democrats are “overthinking” the solution by analyzing the voters who flipped sides or skipped voting during the last election.

“It’s more simple than that,” Rocha said. “Just concentrate on people who are frustrated as hell and get both of them.”

Rocha pointed to the New York mayoral race as proof. He says progressive upstart-turned-party nominee Zohran Mamdani (D) was able to capture voters — including those who did not vote a few months ago in the presidential election — by talking about affordability and other tangible economic issues that appealed to them.

Rocha said voters “want anything that’s different” from the status quo when it comes to the cost of living.

“It shows how desperate people are,” he said.

While many Democrats disagree with Mamdani's politics, they say the campaign he........

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