KILMARNOCK, Va. - If Democrats want to rebound from their 2024 election catastrophe in 2026, they're going need to win over voters like Valerie Rancourt.
Rancourt, and her husband, Mike, voted for President Barack Obama twice before breaking with the party in 2016, 2020 and 2024 when they voted for President Donald Trump. The retirees from New Hampshire, who moved to a rural town in Virginia's Northern Neck − sandwiched between the Rappahannock River and the Chesapeake Bay − also voted Republican in the Virginia gubernatorial election on Nov. 4.
As they walked along Kilmarnock's Main Street on a sunny Monday afternoon, a day before the election, they made it clear that it would take a lot for Democrats to win them back, including jettisoning "woke" policies and stemming illegal immigration. Neither of them see that happening anytime soon.
“The Democrats are getting a lot of things wrong," said Valerie Rancourt, 67. "They’ve become, in my opinion, very hateful and no longer vote for what's best for this country. They are loosey-goosey on illegal immigration."
Democrats' hopes of recapturing Congress in next year's midterm elections and the White House in 2028 depend in part on winning back disaffected Democrats and voters who once backed Obama but flipped to Trump in the 2016 and 2024 elections.
