What the DNC’s 2024 autopsy actually says, and what it leaves out

The Democratic National Committee’s review of the 2024 election runs 192 pages, but several of its core sections were never finished, and the committee added notes throughout disputing the author’s findings. BDN reviewed the report, which is posted in full here, as published Thursday by CNN.

The document was written by Democratic strategist Paul Rivera and carries the title “Build to Win. Build to Last.” Its executive summary, its conclusion, and its notes and sources sections were left blank, each marked as not provided by the author. A disclaimer on every page states that the DNC was not given the underlying interviews, sourcing or data and cannot verify many of the claims.

Where the report is complete, it focuses on why Kamala Harris ran behind Democrats who won down the ballot. It describes what it calls a male voter problem, finding that every down-ballot Democrat it examined outperformed Harris among men. North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein ran nearly 8 points ahead of her statewide and won 51% of men to her 40%. The report says Harris fell below 50% support among first-time voters, which it calls a first for a modern Democratic presidential candidate.

It faults the Biden White House for not strengthening Harris over more than three years in office and for failing to drive up Donald Trump’s negatives before Biden left the race. It argues Harris never defined herself to voters beyond opposition to Trump. It points to Stein and Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson, who ran on cost-of-living and public safety messages, as a model for reaching the rural and non-college voters the campaign lost.

On spending, the report says the Biden-Harris and Harris-Walz committee spent more than $1.15 billion, with about 71% going to advertising and only a small fraction to direct voter contact. It says a narrow group of firms handled most Democratic institutional spending across the presidential, Senate and House campaigns.

The DNC’s annotations challenge the report repeatedly. The committee flagged numerous passages as unsupported or contradicted by public reporting, corrected the number of Democratic governors who won in 2024 (the report said two, the DNC says three), and disputed vote-count figures the report used to argue the election was decided by narrow margins. Several sections, the DNC noted, contradict claims made elsewhere in the same document.

The report does not address the disputes that have most divided the party since the loss, including Biden’s decision to seek reelection, Harris becoming the nominee without a primary, and the campaign’s handling of the war in Gaza.

Chair Ken Martin, who commissioned the review and then declined to release it for months, posted a statement to X on Thursday apologizing for how he handled it. He said the report was not ready when he received it late last year and would have required starting over because no source material was provided. He said withholding it created a bigger distraction than releasing it would have, and that he was publishing it unedited so voters could trust the party. The DNC posted the full report and statement at democrats.org/after-action. Rivera declined to comment.