The Democratic National Committee won't release its completed postmortem of the 2024 election, a DNC official confirmed to NBC News.
DNC Chair Ken Martin ordered an autopsy shortly after he took over as the national party chairman this year, stressing that the report should be released to help the party learn from its mistakes. But Martin said in a statement Thursday that his top priority is to not distract from helping the party "win."
"We completed a comprehensive review of what happened in 2024 and are already putting our learnings into motion. And we’re winning again — even in places that haven’t gone blue in decades," Martin said.
"In our conversations with stakeholders from across the Democratic ecosystem, we are aligned on what’s important, and that’s learning from the past and winning the future. Here’s our North Star: does this help us win? If the answer is no, it’s a distraction from the core mission,” the statement continues.
Frustrated Democrats demanded a top-down look at the national party's strategy in the wake of the disappointing 2024 presidential election. Vice President Kamala Harris lost all of the key swing states to Donald Trump after she took over the ticket from President Joe Biden in July of the election year.
In an interview with NBC News last year, while he was seeking the DNC chairmanship, Martin stressed the need for an outside audit of "everything," and throughout his campaign he stressed the need for the party to understand why it performed relatively poorly among key constituencies.
"I think you’re looking at everything. It’s not just contracts and consultants, it’s not just ad spends and media buys, it’s A through Z," Martin said last year.
Adding that consultants "need to go," he said he was referring not to the Harris campaign specifically but to a "commentary on the culture of Washington, D.C."
When he won the party's backing to become chairman months later, Martin confirmed to reporters that a postelection review would be his top priority on his first day. He also said he'd release the report publicly, criticizing the party for not having released its post-2016 election autopsy publicly.
"There was a postelection review done many years ago, right after the ’16 election, right? And that was never released. The DNC spent a lot of time and money on it, and it wasn't even released to the DNC members. So what happened with that, right? Was there any utility in doing that?" he said in February.
"Of course it will be released, right? It will be released to our members, and we all have to learn from that. There has to be some lessons that we bring on so that we can operationalize it. ... What are our marching orders? What did we learn from this last election that can help inform the future and help put us back on track? Absolutely, 100%," Martin said then.
Democrats have been buoyed by victories in key elections like the Virginia and New Jersey’s governor’s contests last month, as well as overperformances in special elections across the country. But as frustration with Trump has given Democrats an opening ahead of next year’s midterms, there are still indications the Democratic Party as an institution is struggling to turn around its poor image rating. And the Republican National Committee has amassed a massive edge over the DNC in cash reserves.
It’s not immediately clear how critically the review looked into some of the thorniest questions Democrats faced last year around Biden’s late-stage decision not to run for re-election. It's also not clear whether the review engaged with criticism of the Harris campaign’s strategy in the final few months before Election Day, questions that have stoked division within the party. Nor is it clear who within the party has seen the review.
A DNC official told NBC News that the completed review includes hundreds of interviews with people from all 50 states and that it includes specific lessons, like ways to revamp campaign organizing and better ways to reach young voters. It also includes details about the party's needing to be more responsive to voters' concerns, particularly on issues with which Democrats were seen as defensive or lacking credibility, like immigration and the economy.
The official added that as Democrats feel optimistic about their positioning ahead of the 2026 midterms, the national party committee didn't want to turn the party’s focus backward.
