FT: Dems have shifted sharply left in recent years compared to the median voter

[VOSS]

The main reason the Democrats lost the US election is that inflation kills political incumbents. But that doesn't mean there are not other lessons in the results.

 

Data suggests the Democrats lost ground with moderates, while holding steady among progressives. Charges that racism propelled voters to Donald Trump are at odds with the rightward swing among Black and Hispanic voters, and with a raft of data showing that racial prejudice is in steady decline among Americans of all political stripes.

 

Instead, the data shows Democrats taking a sharp turn leftward on social issues over the past decade. This has distanced them from the median voter. We see this not only in Democratic voters' self-reported ideology, but in their views on issues including immigration and whether or not minorities need extra help to succeed in society. Notably, the shift began in 2016. This suggests that Trump's election radicalised the left, not the right.

 

 

America's decades-long progress towards racial and sexual tolerance and equality has been a gradual shift, led by progressives with the centre and right quickly following.

 

The pivots of the past decade, by contrast, have been abrupt and are leaving the majority behind. They are better characterised not as moves towards greater tolerance and equality but as shifts in rhetoric or proposed solutions for addressing disparities, where there is plenty of room for disagreement without bigotry.

 

Many of these pivots originated with the activists and non-profit staffers that surround the Democratic party. In an invaluable piece of research carried out in 2021, political scientists Alexander Furnas and Timothy LaPira at the think-tank Data for Progress found that these "political elites" or tastemakers hold views often well to the left of the average voter — and even the average Democratic voter — on cultural issues.

 

This can create situations where policies and rhetoric alienate the very groups they're aimed at. While 73 per cent of white progressive Democrats favour cutting the size and scope of police forces, only 37 per cent of Black Americans agree. A new study by Amanda Sahar d'Urso and Marcel Roman, at Georgetown and Harvard universities respectively, found that the use of the gender-neutral term "Latinx" used by some progressives was not only deeply unpopular with many Hispanic Americans but may have actively pushed some towards Trump.

These shifts, layered on top of increasing education polarisation, are changing the image of the Democratic party in voters' minds. Survey data shows that in every election from 1948 to 2012, American voters' image of the Democrats was as the party that stood up for the working class and the poor. In 2016 that flipped. Now it is seen primarily as the party of minority advocacy.

 

This evolution has reduced the salience of class and economic solidarity — a domain in which Furnas and LaPira find Democratic elites more in tune with the public than their Republican counterparts — and elevated sociocultural issues, where the GOP is on firmer ground.

 

Whether or not progressives are ready to accept it, the evidence all points in one direction. America's moderate voters have not deserted the Democrats; the party has pushed them away.

 

Source

[Capris Groove]

It's the orthodoxical approach. People do not like to be told "you must agree with this, this, and this, otherwise you're a this." No matter the topic. It turns them off.

 

I fully believe you can get people to agree with you, it's all about how you deliver the message.

Edited November 15 by Capris Groove

[kimberly]

is it a new discovery that DEMS are to the left of the MEDIAN VOTER (including MAGA)?

 

this is also silly because CONSERVATIVES, by nature, want to keep things the same/in the past (no movement needed). Dems/leftists need to SHIFT to make progress. duh

[Communion]

8 minutes ago, VOSS said:

Data suggests the Democrats lost ground with moderates, while holding steady among progressives.

[Kimbra]

*waits for a bunch of out of the context paragraphs from new jersey*

[Mean Trees]

Such a lie. A mainstream publication trying to invent reality so the main center right party moves further to the right.

[Communion]

11 minutes ago, Kimbra said:

*waits for a bunch of out of the context paragraphs from new jersey*

[NEX]

I've been saying this for a while, but progressives lost their minds both with the wildness of their ideas/beliefs about social issues and especially with their approach towards how they aim to achieve their goals. It's either you 100% agree with all of their madness or you are a disgusting human being that needs to be permanently shut down and made fun of. ATRL is full of these type of idiots. I don't need to name them again, everyone knows who they are. It's not working, it's not going to work, it's only pushing an average person towards time right. A lot of progress made over the last few decades is getting erased before our eyes 

[John Slayne]

yeah but the median voter is now a fascist because the country has shifted to the right so much already 

[Kylizzle]

I think some of y'all need to just say "Democrats should concede the trans issue to conservatives" if that's what you want. 

[Communion]

33 minutes ago, John Slayne said:

yeah but the median voter is now a fascist because the country has shifted to the right so much already 

The "median voter" is also a meaningless term because it suggests registered Republicans somehow should influence what policy Democrats run on and that Democratic politicians can, in-earnest expect to win over Republican voters if they move over to their policy positions (Kamala Harris earned the lowest % of Republican switchers in modern history). The median voter for Democratic electeds is somewhere between registered Dems & indies.

 

Yet, even as Democrats have become more progressives, they still remain closer to what political independents want than Republicans have largely ever been. 

 

If we actually look at the data when it's broken down by party, it shows political independents and registered Democrats are largely in-step and together represent what the top of the graph would look to show - that the sing to the left in 2012 (!) on immigration occurred because most Dems and political independents wanted it.

 

And even in the shifts as shown in the OP, it in practical terms gets revealed as Republicans diverging outwards to a more extreme position.

 

 

The weird focus on 2016 ( @Kylizzle is right that people should just say what they mean re: trans people) becomes nonsensical when we see the rightward trend on immigration literally did not occur until 2022 and the impact of the pandemic, let alone how in 2024 that Democrats are still closer to independent voters (20-points more favorable to immigrants) than Republicans are (27-points less favorable to immigrants).

 

 

Edited November 15 by Communion

[BrokenMachine]

How is it 'sharply' when they have done nothing for universal healthcare or stopping genocides ?

[Princess Aurora]

I think about how these elites are this and that when they're the elite. The projection from MAGA has no limits...

[Thuggin]

It's important to point out you can do the same thing for the right.

 

What percent of Americans support universal background checks on firearms compared to elected Republicans? What percent of Americans support exceptions to abortion bans compared to elected Republicans? What percent of Americans support anti-discrimination laws compared to elected Republicans?

[kimberly]

1 hour ago, Communion said:

end of discussion, really.

 

who'd have thought KISSING LIZ CHENEY and DICK CHENEY ass, and shifting the campaign to the right as much as possible to win over alleged "undecided suburban voters" and Republicans would have COLLAPSED younger left-wing turnout?

 

Harris campaign, by the end, turned the election into a Republican primary instead. the votes she desperately needed were NOT the Republicans, it was her own base.

[Arthoe]

An investigation by the Intercept, the Nation, and DeSmog found that FT is one of the leading media outlets that publishes advertising for the fossil fuel industry.[49] Journalists who cover climate change for FT are concerned that conflicts of interest with the companies and industries that caused climate change and obstructed action will reduce the credibility of their reporting on climate change and cause readers to downplay the climate crisis.[49]

 

Since the late 20th century, its typical depth of coverage has linked the paper with a white-collar, educated, and financially literate readership.[9][10] Because of this tendency, the FT has traditionally been regarded as a centrist[11] to centre-right[12] liberal,[13] neo-liberal,[14] and conservative-liberal[2] newspaper.

A conservative news outlet doctoring statistics about the "woke left"? Groundbreaking.

 

Also like... what even is a "median" voter in this context? A median voter is not the aggregate of all voters, it is literally just ONE voter, specifically just one singular voter that is elected to be the "middle" from the people that do the data collection. If you know that Republicans have collected 14 million more votes more than Dems... of course the one median voter "in the middle" is still a Trumpian Maga Republican.

 

This is literally the cheapest attempt to root MAGA extremism into centrism, the data ain't even worth discussing.

[JO1s]

No, the reasons why dems lost is because they pandered to moderate conservatives.

 

If you actually look at which policy is popular, it's further left of where the democratic party is.

[perfect blue]

Working class americans want economic relief and don't give a **** about identity politics. This isn't breaking news.

[Communion]

6 minutes ago, kimberly said:

end of discussion, really.

 

who'd have thought KISSING LIZ CHENEY and DICK CHENEY ass, and shifting the campaign to the right as much as possible to win over alleged "undecided suburban voters" and Republicans would have COLLAPSED younger left-wing turnout?

 

Harris campaign, by the end, turned the election into a Republican primary instead. the votes she desperately needed were NOT the Republicans, it was her own base.

This is an important point, thank you. Many analysts have found that Democrats *increase* their chances of losing when buying into or uplifting Republican narratives on issues.

 

The fact that Democrats and independents were lock-step for all of 2016-2021 actually correlates with the progressive belief that public opinion is basically molded by institutions and national Dems shifting rightward on the issue of immigration turned public opinion on it, not that public opinion turned and so they "reflexively" moved, for example.

 

The timeline for positive sentiment on immigration vs when Biden shifted from populist messaging to austerity messaging (scapegoating immigrants in much of it):

44 minutes ago, Communion said:

 

[QueenB]

1 hour ago, Communion said:

Also to keep in mind a large portion of the youth vote turned 30 in those 4 years. So I'd still say this is a troubling sign of the youth turning red still.

Also surprising only 4% listed foreign policy as the top priority 

[brazil]

"Charges that racism propelled voters to Donald Trump are at odds with the rightward swing among Black and Hispanic voters"

 

This article from right-wing FT is trying to push a narrative, but in the first phrase you can see it's weak argument. Latino and black voters can be racist. In fact many latinos are notoriously racists. Not only that, latino and black male voters are as sexist as white male voters.

[BOOMBAYAH]

Is the Democratic Party not supposed to be a left wing party? Why does it matter if they aren't lined up perfectly with the average American, the party's job is to represent and push left-wing and progressive values (to the extent they can in their pro-capitalist neoliberal framework). 

[Marianah Adkins]

I think the tea here is that the median American voter is socially conservative but economically liberal. 

The GOP has been getting ahead because they are surprisingly larping some economically liberal policies while staying socially conservative

The DNC lost its ground this year as it is further left more than ever socially and for some reason (the biggest error) they have the perception of becoming the economic conservative party. 

[modeblock]

The reason they lost is because the Democrats thought they could run on thoughts and prayers re: immigration, trans rights, etc. They leaned on sociocultural issues without the economic policies that actually support minorities, like universal healthcare, which reads as FAKE and PERFORMATIVE. Voters detected this and either decided to stay at home with disillusionment or vote against their own interests. 

[Communion]

17 hours ago, QueenB said:

Also to keep in mind a large portion of the youth vote turned 30 in those 4 years. So I'd still say this is a troubling sign of the youth turning red still.

This is not really a meaningful note when a demographic has less than 50% of turnout. Trump's share of the youth vote did not change overall and barely improved in swing states.

 

That Democrats lose when youth turnout is less than 50% should tell us that:

- Young voters are largely progressive

- Are more likely to stay home when presented with the options being Republicans vs Democrat-Lite Republicans.