Retiring Utah Sen. Mitt Romney said he was surprised at how badly Democrats misread the electorate in the 2024 election.
In a wide-ranging interview that aired Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Romney said, “I’m looking at this last election. Uh, I shake my head when I look at our Democratic friends. How could they have misunderstood the public mood so badly?”
Romney, who was the last Republican presidential candidate besides Donald Trump in 2012, cited inflation: “Don’t you see what people see when they go to the grocery store?” – as something that Democrats did not recognize as a major problem for Americans. He also mentioned immigration and gender issues as other areas where he thought President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party failed to accurately gauge public perception and feelings.
“The Democrats have seriously misread the direction of the country and the attitude of the country,” he said. “And President Trump has taken advantage of that, and he should.”
He saw trouble ahead for the Democratic Party.
“Look, the Republican Party has become the party of the working class and the middle class voter, and you have to give Donald Trump credit for doing that,” he told host Jake Tapper. “Taking that away from the Democrats.”
The 77-year-old chose not to run for another term in the Senate; Republican Rep. John Curtis won the open seat. Romney gave a farewell speech in the Senate on Wednesday. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell praised his “long and honorable career on the national political stage.”
Romney has been one of the Republicans most critical of Trump over the past decade. In a conversation with Tapper, Romney declined to say who he voted for for president this year.
“There’s one great thing we have in this country,” he told Tapper, “and that’s the secret ballot. So I’m not going to tell you who I voted for in 2024.”
