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Keep it simple.

With Republicans already running shadow campaigns for 2020, Democrats need to settle on the messages theyll use to compete withDonald Trump and his party in the upcoming elections. And their most effective narratives wont be pretty.

True, President Trump has given Democrats plenty of cause for complaint, but that itself is a danger to the party. The risk is that, with so many issues and scandals to talk about, Democrats will end up with a fractured message.

Research shows that voters prefer simplicity. A 2014 study by researchers at Georgetown University and the University of California, Los Angeles found that people find information about politicians more persuasivewhen theyre presented with just three claims. When given more messages, they become moreskeptical -- because they begin to realize theyre being pushed in one direction.

Thats why, to take Congress and the White House back, Democrats need to choose three key points and stick to them.

And those points need to seed dissatisfaction with Trump. Voters vote retrospectively, says my colleague Meena Bose, director of the Peter S. Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency at Hofstra University. If things are going well, they tend to stick with the incumbent and if theyre going badly, they tend to vote against the incumbent.

But voters perceptions of the economy can be more important than reality. For example, one study concluded that George H.W. Bush lost his 1992 bid for re-election because of negative media coverage of the economy -- which was actually improving. This leaves Democrats an important opportunity to shape the national conversation around Trumps economic record -- especially the fact that Americans incomes are barely rising.

Stephanie Cutter, deputy campaign manager for Barack Obama in 2012, says the party needs to convey that Hes giving you a raw deal and we can do better, basically.

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Another reason Democrats should go negative is that it works: Research shows that negative information about candidates affectsvoters judgments more than positive information. (This could be because paying attention to threatsoffered an evolutionary advantage to ourour ancestors, researchers say.) It takes at least three positive messages to undo the damage done by one negative message, according to Vincent Covello, director of the Center for Risk Communication, a strategic communications consultancy.

The best way for Democrats to go negative will be to convince voters that Trump doesnt care about them. Former Vermont governor and presidential candidate Howard Dean says the most important question asked in polls is whether a candidate cares about people like me. People vote on emotion, he says.

So here are three key messages Democrats could rally around to convince voters that Trump doesnt care about them:

Even if Trump ultimately abandons his campaign promise to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, his threat to let it implode will remain a huge risk for millions of Americans. The Trump administration agreed this week to make the subsidy payment required by the government under the law. But Trump had previously indicated he might not do so and hasnt disavowed withholding future payments, which would leave about 16 millionwithout insurers in the marketplace and cause premiums to soar for many, according to the CBO.

What people care about is can they afford things, can they pay the bills, Cutter says. Those are the core things at the heart of most elections. Indeed, according to Texas A&M professor B. Dan Wood, author of The Politics of Economic Leadership: The Causes and Consequences of Presidential Rhetoric, since the Gallup poll was established in 1946, Americans have typically said that the economy is the most important problem the country faces.

Indeed, last month, a poll by PBS NewsHour, NPR and Marist College found that 70 percent of Americans believe civility has declined since Trump became president. And the exodus of CEOs from Trumps business advisory councils this past week over his response to the attack on anti-hate protesters in Charlottesville offers just another example of how his divisiveness has turned supporters into critics.

With so many questions and scandals surrounding Trump, the biggest threat facing the opposition party right now is the embarrassment of riches available for criticizing the president. Democrats need to stay disciplined and focus on the few messages that will actually move voters in the next election.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story: Kara Alaimo at kara.s.alaimo@hofstra.edu

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3 Messages Would Help Democrats Beat Trump - Bloomberg