New polling highlights media challenges for Dems around GOP budget bill
To: Interested Parties
From: Priorities USA
Subject: New polling highlights media challenges for Dems around GOP budget bill
Date: 06/27/25
Since Vice President Harris’s loss last November, there’s one thing all Democrats agree on: our message did not break through to voters. Now, nearly 8 months later, new polling by Priorities USA suggests that Democrats are no closer to authentically reaching the parts of the coalition that they lost. Currently, large swaths and key subsets of Americans don’t recall hearing anything about the GOP budget bill making its way through Congress.
Nearly half (48%) of Americans haven’t heard anything about the ‘Big, Beautiful Bill.’ Even among the 52% who report hearing anything, a significant number – 40% – only mention generalities or its status in Congress. Nearly two dozen policy impacts of the bill are raised by the rest of the survey respondents. These range from perceived positive economic benefits, like tax cuts, to negative impacts on government programs like SNAP and Social Security. More respondents have heard specifically about cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and health care generally than any other aspect of the legislation. And yet, only 8% of all Americans name Medicaid cuts as a detail of the bill they have heard about.
In contrast, when asked a second question about recall of recent Trump news generally, the largest group of respondents cited strikes on Iran – with 32% of Americans mentioning. Americans are 4x as likely to have heard about Iran bombings as they are to have heard about Medicaid cuts in the bill. Awareness of the GOP bill is limited, diffuse and general in nature, at best. Media consumption data reveals some of the core challenges of breaking through in today’s media landscape, and help explain why so few Americans know anything about such a consequential piece of legislation. Above all else, Americans bifurcate in their interest in news. 43% of Americans actively seek out news – these news seekers are much more aware of the bill, with 70% recalling some details. The rest of the electorate either comes across news passively, in their feeds and conversations, or actively avoids any news about politics. 63% of this group of passive and avoidant news consumers say they know nothing about the bill. Getting the attention of folks who don’t seek out political content remains a persistent communication challenge.
The role Bluesky and Twitter/X play for left and right-leaning media diets is indicative of a larger difference in scale between left and right media ecosystems. While users of Bluesky articulate the clearest criticisms of the bill, adoption of Bluesky is limited – at most, just 10% of voters ever use the platform. In contrast, 65% of 18-24 year old men (and 31% of all voters) in this poll report using Twitter/X.
Similarly, about one-in-five respondents reported listening to Joe Rogan’s podcast, and they are more likely than other voters to report details of the bill related to tax cuts. That audience is 3x larger than the share of respondents who have listened to MeidasTouch(7%) – even though MeidasTouch listeners are the most knowledgeable about the bill, most frequently citing Medicaid cuts specifically, compared to listeners of any other podcast we tested. Rogan is not unique: other shows, like This Past Weekend, Flagrant, Pod Save America and HasanAbi, show similar trends. This tradeoff between reach and message-accuracy illustrates how Republicans would rather be a little less on message with a much wider audience, while Democrats’ obsession with top-testing messages only scales to a small audience.
These different media habits seep into political coalitions in predictable ways. Despite losses in recent elections, Democrats have maintained strong lines of communication among the most engaged voters – and in this data, Biden 2020 – Harris 2024 voters have heard more about the bill than any other segment. This polling suggests Democrats have not yet reached beyond their shrinking coalition despite the need to reengage communities that supported Trump for the first time. 73% of 2024 Trump supporters who didn’t vote in 2020 and 56% of Biden-to-Trump flippers have heard nothing about the bill. These shares are 20 points higher than their Harris supporting counterparts – indicating the urgent opportunity if Democrats break out of our own media silos.
Constituencies that are at the center of discussions to rebuild the Democratic base show lower awareness of the legislation as well. Gen Z voters, especially those 18-24, have heard the least of any age group, with Millennials reporting the most even balance between left and right wing viewpoints on the bill. Black and Latino voters, and voters without a college degree are also less likely to recall details of the bill than other voters.
Recent digital investments by Unrig Our Economy, Majority Forward, Families Over Billionaires and House Majority Forward are directly communicating the stakes of the legislation to voters. Stronger, always-on progressive digital communications infrastructure is an important and necessary complement to campaigns like these.
Priorities surveyed 4,300 nationally representative registered voters via online panels and text-to-web between 6/18-6/25/2025. This poll is part of Priorities’ extensive digital media polling program in the lead up to 2026, laser focused on where voters are spending their time online and what they’re hearing in online spaces – calling the initiative Warbler Media Intelligence.