"America’s polarization is emotional, not ideological" remains really the punchline of this era.
Also I'll just point out that the Pew data makes no attempt to account for varying salience of the different policy questions it asks. That seems like a potential flaw in their typology: their analysis takes as a given that voters have the same degree of feeling about say taxing the rich as about a path to citizen or whatever else.
Like James said, the Pew data does give a bit of this nuance, by asking people whether they “strongly” or “somewhat” agree with various stances (which I then grouped together to calculate the total number who agreed). To Paul’s point, though, the data doesn’t tell us much about respondents compare issues to the other -- maybe you’re in the “Left-Out Left,” for example, but being pro-life is your top issue, and you will only vote for the party that shares that stance, no matter their stance on other issues, because it is so much more important to you than any other issue. That wouldn’t necessarily have been relevant to their putting people into sub-groups, but it is critical information when trying to find out how people will vote -- and I agree, in an election context, people often mistake the # of people who agree with them on a given issue with the # of people who prioritize that issue enough to cast their vote on it.
Right, I guarantee most of the 'Left Our Left' who vote Republican are likely people with very socially conservative views who care most about those views even if they say they're for a higher minimum wage, hate big corporations, and wouldn't mind a wealth tax.
Aka - the type of people who will happily vote for a minimum wage increase or pro-union referendum in a state like Missouri but would never vote for a Democratic candidate.
There is also the fact that “the economy” is pretty much always the number 1 issue, but people’s evaluation of the economy only mostly seems to be “what do things feel like lately” rather then tied to specific policy prescriptions. The OBBB is practically the exact same legislation as Trump passed in his first term, but it was popular then and unpopular now because underlying economic conditions are different.
That's my point. Because the economy did well after TCJA, people rated Trump high on the economy. If the economy does bad after the OBBB, people rate Trump bad on the economy.
But "the economy" rises and falls based on factors on which the TCJA and OBBB (which are ultimately just fiddling with a few % of GDP) can't impact.
In general voters understand "I don't like the way things have been going in the recent past." If they feel that way, incumbent out. If they don't, incumbent in. They don't have a great feel for cause and effect between legislation and outcomes (and often outcomes are beyond legislation).
This isn't the end of the world. When politicians screw up really badly there is a peaceful mechanism to remove them and give someone else a try, and that reality has so much upside (consider the alternative) its worth an electorate that doesn't have a great grasp of the why of their problem and its solution. In fairness, I'm not sure there are many factions that have a better grip on why and what to do then the median voter anyway.
Ah, I understand! Was just pointing out that the tax cuts were unpopular at both points, but you’re right obviously that Trump’s handling of the economy was popular then and unpopular now. I agree that much of politics in our current era can be explained by “are voters happy with the state of the economy; if so, incumbent win; if not, incumbent lose” (and that this is not always an accurate reflection of how much power the president has over the economy, and also that imperfect as that system may be, I much prefer it to the alternative!) The one caveat I’ll add is that there is also room for politicians to move these dials based on charisma and communication skill; we just haven’t tested that out in around a decade. A good example being Obama 2012, when the economy was subpar, but he was still re-elected pretty comfortably. It’s possible that this is because voters care much more about inflation (which was better then) when judging “the economy” than unemployment/GDP growth (which were both worse). But I’ll note that, since Obama, neither party has really tried to nominate someone who has been both a strong communicator and trusted by a somewhat broad cross-section of the public. To me, one interesting test will be after 2028 -- if both parties, as I expect, nominate younger, better communicators who are more skilled at reaching out to swing voters (be they Vance, Rubio, Ossoff, Shapiro, etc) -- whether there is any style of politician that can trump anti-incumbent sentiments and economic dissatisfaction (even potentially in times when the economy is struggling), or whether not even that can make a difference.
I liked the analysis so much I went through the sign-up four times to get through as a paid subscriber, upgrading--it's a tough row to hoe with us, given the multitude of Substacks!
I do have some comments, though: 1) The Tuned-out Middle group (9%) is useless. They are the equivalent of the 10% of Independents who answer "Don't know" to every polling question. They don't vote. Take them out of the calculations.
2) There is very little experience in USA elections of three genuinely competitive candidates, one of which is in the middle and the other two the nominated party candidates. Ross Perot is the only one who comes to mind in a national election, and he got zero Electoral votes. On the other hand, 40% could win if the two parties on the extremes split the other votes. 50% is not actually needed.
3) Finally, I took the Pew quiz the other day and got Order and Opportunity, but I am an extremely loyal Democrat, and not really that moderate (Pew didn't get me right). The only way I would desert them for a 3rd-party moderate was if it were clear the Democrat had no chance to defeat the Republican.
I actually think the future could be four parties, two from the current Republicans and two from the current Democrats, when they fracture along the lines already present. Looking forward to it!
Thank you for upgrading, James! Respectfully, I don’t agree that the Tuned-Out Middle should be removed — per Pew, about one-third of them did vote in the 2024 election, which is still enough to have an electoral impact. And even apart from their electoral impact, they are still a huge chunk of the American public who it is important to understand. It’s true that their stances and level of political engagement are hard to predict, but they can still play a role when activated -- other Pew data shows that about one-quarter of 2020 non-voters voted in 2024 (https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/feature/how-changes-in-turnout-and-vote-choice-powered-trumps-victory-in-2024/). Who comes out to vote isn’t always stable election to election. I agree with your other point on 50% not actually being needed, I should have noted something to that effect. And that’s interesting to hear you felt mis-categorized by the Pew quiz! Would be curious how frequent that is.
I think the actual issue is this - it's extremely unlikely that 65% that believe illegal immigration is a big problem is the same 65% that want a path to citizenship and a big chunk of the former don't want the latter and won't vote for the above or that the 63% believe that America is strengthened by its diversity don't completely overlap with the 57% believe that efforts to promote diversity in schools and workplaces have failed to make life more fair and so on and so forth.
Also, agreeing that there's a problem doesn't mean there's any overlap on what the solution is - I'd be among the 76% that gun violence is an issue but my solution and an NRA members solution would basically have no overlap and what overlap there would be would be a band aid on a bullet hole. Same thing w/ the deficit - I do think the deficit is an issue - I think we should fix it with basically reversing all of the tax cuts since Reagan and then only then doing some cuts. Obviously, a Republican is unlikely to agree with that.
Those very split issues are the issues people care a lot about, which is why they become big-time issues and there are lots of people who may say, disagree w/ the Democrats on trans kids in sports or DEI but really care about health care or abortion so they'll never vote for your moderate party even if they code as moderate and vice versa on the Republican side.
It's not a surprise the most successful independent candidate in history needed billionaire money and one issue that was a big issue (free trade) where the other parties were on the same side.
That's what you'd actually need - a situation where both parties were on the same side of an issue - a big chunk of the population was on the other side and it was a high saliency issue. This is unlikely to happen which is why possible independent candidates of the past - ala Trump or Mamdani - would rather take over the parties as opposed to running their own campaigns.
Gabe - This is a brilliant analysis that goes well beyond the surface of the Pew study. What this suggests to me is that the reason that we are split 50-50 politically is because the wings dominate and would rather be right than in power. If the members of one party, across the different policy groups, were willing to compromise on some, but not all, of their principled stances, that party would be able to capture a much larger part of the vote.
However, the engaged partisans are so fixated on either getting everything or making sure that their opposites get nothing, that we end up with the current unstable situation.
It is my opinion that a politician who ran a Clinton-esque (Bill, not Hillary) campaign that was laser-focused on the economy and pushed all other non-economic concerns to the side would have a significant edge over the culture warriors.
The most useful sentence in this piece might be the one that gets the least attention: 'Engagement trumps disengagement every time.' That's not just a national phenomenon. It's the same reason eleven people show up to the zoning meeting and decide what gets built in a town of forty thousand. The eleven aren't a representative sample of the town. They're just the eleven who showed up. National politics runs on the same mechanism at a much bigger scale — the most engaged 20% on each wing are doing the deciding, and the quiet 60% in the middle keeps assuming somebody else will handle it. A centrist party doesn't fail because the agreement isn't there. It fails because agreement without engagement doesn't show up to vote, and showing up is the whole game.
Great idea. End the 250-year-old American experiment by handing victory to the Republican Party by splitting the Democratic vote between Democrats and a third party.
FWIW, I don’t really think there’s any reason to believe the hypothetical “Centrist Party” — which I’m not advocating for, merely exploring what it would look like — would take more Democratic votes than Republican votes. The middle five groups in Pew’s typology are pretty evenly split between the two current party coalitions.
I appreciate your response. I suggest the following. I hope you find this helpful.
There is a centrist party. It's called the Democratic Party. A centrist party is biased in favor of getting to the truth. In Abraham Lincoln's words, the centrist party has faith that right makes might.
A not-centrist party is biased in favor of getting "our" way at "their" expense. The current version of the Republican Party is a not-centrist party. Clearly, the Republican Party has gone "all in" on might makes right, and Lincoln is rolling in his grave.
For literally every unresolved issue, there is a to-be-but-not-yet-discovered win-win resolution. The one (only) obstacle is a bias in favor of getting "our" way at "their" expense.
I was defining centrist as holding neither consistently left-wing nor right-wing policy positions. Of the mix of majority-supported issues I identified to fall into that basket, many of them are supported by Democrats and opposed by Republicans; may others are supported by Republicans and opposed by Democrats.
Your heading toward the true meaning of left-wing (progressive) and right-wing (conservative). When both sides are biased in favor of getting to the truth, conservatives protect the status quo by identifying flaws in the logic the progressive uses to justify a proposed change, then the progressive corrects the flaw, then the process repeats until there are no flaws and both sides agree that the issue has been addressed.
Identifying an issue as specific to one side of the political spectrum is a not-centrist's way of getting "our" way at "their" expense.
Am I overlooking something, or oversimplifying the situation? I don't think I am.
You have to keep in mind that Gabe is amoral and always ignores whether a policy is good or not, both morally and in terms of aligning with what is true.
The truth is often inconvenient in the short term, but it is always convenient in the long term. A falsehood is generally convenient in the short term, but it is always inconvenient in the long term.
Being moral is getting to the truth, which is the second hardest thing a human being can do. Not being moral means living with the long-term consequences of failing to get to the truth which is the hardest thing a human being can do. But why would anyone want that?
Maybe you know something I don't know. Based on what I know, your comment falls in the "idle speculation" category. So, what do you know that I don't know?
You're right, it's speculation. What holds the Democratic party together is its opposition to the Republicans. There is a lot of tension within the party between the "left" and "center-left".
Okay, but that explains your logic. Did you read my responses to Gabe's replies? I think there's an achievable future state where "we the people" are addressing real issues and not made up (aka "wedge") issues.
Oh, heck yeah. If the Democrats have the right message and candidates, they can win very big in '28. In my dream scenario, after that the Republicans break up into MAGA and Reformed MAGA. But the Democrats can hardly stand electoral prosperity--look how quickly Johnson's landslide in '68 turned into McGovern's defeat in '72. Or Carter's in '76 to '80, or Obama's 2012 to 2016, etc.
I’m a lover of all things data and I hugely appreciate you taking the time to do the analysis here and pose such interesting questions to answer with this study’s results.
One limitation that I wanted to note and that your writing seems to take for granted is “voter activity.” While fair to say that so many of the center-leaning groups are less engaged, I think there’s another explanation. Rather than civic engagement being a universal trait, I think it’s more likely that it’s related to enfranchisement (and likely personal risk).
In other words, it’s incomplete to do an analysis of speculating about a different party system without considering that engagement and enfranchisement would markedly be different with such a party in the mix.
Proportional representation (where if a party gets 30% of the vote, it gets 30% of the seats) would allow for multiple centrist parties! Many independents hold very different opinions from the main two parties and each other. PR would allow these ideas to have real sway in Congress
A comment on the survey.... In some cases, nuance is lost in the wording of the question in a survey like Pew's, commendable effort as it is.
For example, I would strongly favor ID (proof-of-citizenship) requirements for voting PROVIDED that all levels of gov't went out of their way to make ID availability easy and uncomplicated, incldg in-person outreach to homebound folks (like during census time), forgiving the cost of IDs for lower-income folks who prefer not to pay or cannot afford it, etc., and PROVIDED that enough time (a couple of election cycles, e.g. 4 years) is allowed before this requirement formally takes effect, so that we ensure almost 100% coverage for all interested voters. (The fact that we have only a 60--67% turnout in most elections is, in my view, a matter of shame for the country as a whole.)
Of course this loss of nuance is understandable - you can't have a paragraph-long Q in an 80-Q survey! I'm just saying...
"These same lessons apply to issues like the measles vaccine (supported by 84% of the country) or transgender athletes participating in the sports teams of their choice (opposed by 73%), both of which are covered as though they are much more contested issues than they are in real life"
This is just one example of grossly dishonest bothsidesism from the author. The GOP has BOTH made anti-vaccines federal policy via RJK Jr. AND uses virulent attacks on transgender people to sow division and paint Democrats as extremists for simply not wanting transgender people to be abused, demonized, have their rights squashed, murdered. The GOP campaigns constantly on "the transgender issue", Democrats virtually not at all. Kamala Harris was even criticized for taking a position against transgender rights as CA AG: https://www.c-span.org/clip/road-to-the-white-house-2020/senator-kamala-harris-record-as-california-ag-comes-under-scrutiny/4775660
Transgender rights played no role in the Harris/Walz campaign *other than* the right wing demonizing Walz as "tampon Tim" for signing a perfectly reasonable law regarding availability of such products “to all menstruating students in restrooms regularly used by students.” (https://www.npr.org/2024/08/07/nx-s1-5066878/tim-walz-tampon-law-minnesota) Over and over, the GOP uses such disgusting vile dishonest propaganda techniques, and over and over the author legitimizes them and magnifies their effect with his bothsidesism, making out like the right wing caricature of Democrats as extremists is reality and equating that to the ACTUAL extremism of the GOP.
"though Sanders has since moved away from his pro-gun, anti-immigration, anti-woke positioning"
This is such an extraordinarily dishonest take of Bernie's views, especially the latter, which in part reflects the ever amoral author's complete failure to understand what "woke" is. Nowhere in the linked Politico article (with its bogus clickbait headline) does Bernie say anything even remotely "anti-woke", nor is criticism of "identity politics" at all the same thing outside the minds of bigots. One can be as woke as can be and still offer criticisms of "identity politics" -- which Bernie did not in fact do, he argued *for* intersectionality between diversity and economics, arguing that pure identity politics is "not good enough" (which itself is a bit of a strawman), candidates must *also* oppose oligarchy.
The majority of Americans agree with Democratic Party policy and disagree with Trump Regime policy (as far as extreme grift, corruption, and retributive weaponization of government can be considered policy).
Good stuff here.
"America’s polarization is emotional, not ideological" remains really the punchline of this era.
Also I'll just point out that the Pew data makes no attempt to account for varying salience of the different policy questions it asks. That seems like a potential flaw in their typology: their analysis takes as a given that voters have the same degree of feeling about say taxing the rich as about a path to citizen or whatever else.
Not quite true: some groups with varying intensity of feeling in the quiz are lumped together here for the purposes of the argument.
Like James said, the Pew data does give a bit of this nuance, by asking people whether they “strongly” or “somewhat” agree with various stances (which I then grouped together to calculate the total number who agreed). To Paul’s point, though, the data doesn’t tell us much about respondents compare issues to the other -- maybe you’re in the “Left-Out Left,” for example, but being pro-life is your top issue, and you will only vote for the party that shares that stance, no matter their stance on other issues, because it is so much more important to you than any other issue. That wouldn’t necessarily have been relevant to their putting people into sub-groups, but it is critical information when trying to find out how people will vote -- and I agree, in an election context, people often mistake the # of people who agree with them on a given issue with the # of people who prioritize that issue enough to cast their vote on it.
Right, I guarantee most of the 'Left Our Left' who vote Republican are likely people with very socially conservative views who care most about those views even if they say they're for a higher minimum wage, hate big corporations, and wouldn't mind a wealth tax.
Aka - the type of people who will happily vote for a minimum wage increase or pro-union referendum in a state like Missouri but would never vote for a Democratic candidate.
There is also the fact that “the economy” is pretty much always the number 1 issue, but people’s evaluation of the economy only mostly seems to be “what do things feel like lately” rather then tied to specific policy prescriptions. The OBBB is practically the exact same legislation as Trump passed in his first term, but it was popular then and unpopular now because underlying economic conditions are different.
I don’t necessarily disagree with your broader point, but worth noting that the TCJA was not popular at the time. Here’s a poll from Gallup, for example ,that had it at 33% approval after passage: https://news.gallup.com/poll/225137/americans-remain-negative-tax-bill-passage.aspx?utm_source=chatgpt.com
That's my point. Because the economy did well after TCJA, people rated Trump high on the economy. If the economy does bad after the OBBB, people rate Trump bad on the economy.
But "the economy" rises and falls based on factors on which the TCJA and OBBB (which are ultimately just fiddling with a few % of GDP) can't impact.
In general voters understand "I don't like the way things have been going in the recent past." If they feel that way, incumbent out. If they don't, incumbent in. They don't have a great feel for cause and effect between legislation and outcomes (and often outcomes are beyond legislation).
This isn't the end of the world. When politicians screw up really badly there is a peaceful mechanism to remove them and give someone else a try, and that reality has so much upside (consider the alternative) its worth an electorate that doesn't have a great grasp of the why of their problem and its solution. In fairness, I'm not sure there are many factions that have a better grip on why and what to do then the median voter anyway.
Ah, I understand! Was just pointing out that the tax cuts were unpopular at both points, but you’re right obviously that Trump’s handling of the economy was popular then and unpopular now. I agree that much of politics in our current era can be explained by “are voters happy with the state of the economy; if so, incumbent win; if not, incumbent lose” (and that this is not always an accurate reflection of how much power the president has over the economy, and also that imperfect as that system may be, I much prefer it to the alternative!) The one caveat I’ll add is that there is also room for politicians to move these dials based on charisma and communication skill; we just haven’t tested that out in around a decade. A good example being Obama 2012, when the economy was subpar, but he was still re-elected pretty comfortably. It’s possible that this is because voters care much more about inflation (which was better then) when judging “the economy” than unemployment/GDP growth (which were both worse). But I’ll note that, since Obama, neither party has really tried to nominate someone who has been both a strong communicator and trusted by a somewhat broad cross-section of the public. To me, one interesting test will be after 2028 -- if both parties, as I expect, nominate younger, better communicators who are more skilled at reaching out to swing voters (be they Vance, Rubio, Ossoff, Shapiro, etc) -- whether there is any style of politician that can trump anti-incumbent sentiments and economic dissatisfaction (even potentially in times when the economy is struggling), or whether not even that can make a difference.
I liked the analysis so much I went through the sign-up four times to get through as a paid subscriber, upgrading--it's a tough row to hoe with us, given the multitude of Substacks!
I do have some comments, though: 1) The Tuned-out Middle group (9%) is useless. They are the equivalent of the 10% of Independents who answer "Don't know" to every polling question. They don't vote. Take them out of the calculations.
2) There is very little experience in USA elections of three genuinely competitive candidates, one of which is in the middle and the other two the nominated party candidates. Ross Perot is the only one who comes to mind in a national election, and he got zero Electoral votes. On the other hand, 40% could win if the two parties on the extremes split the other votes. 50% is not actually needed.
3) Finally, I took the Pew quiz the other day and got Order and Opportunity, but I am an extremely loyal Democrat, and not really that moderate (Pew didn't get me right). The only way I would desert them for a 3rd-party moderate was if it were clear the Democrat had no chance to defeat the Republican.
I actually think the future could be four parties, two from the current Republicans and two from the current Democrats, when they fracture along the lines already present. Looking forward to it!
Thank you for upgrading, James! Respectfully, I don’t agree that the Tuned-Out Middle should be removed — per Pew, about one-third of them did vote in the 2024 election, which is still enough to have an electoral impact. And even apart from their electoral impact, they are still a huge chunk of the American public who it is important to understand. It’s true that their stances and level of political engagement are hard to predict, but they can still play a role when activated -- other Pew data shows that about one-quarter of 2020 non-voters voted in 2024 (https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/feature/how-changes-in-turnout-and-vote-choice-powered-trumps-victory-in-2024/). Who comes out to vote isn’t always stable election to election. I agree with your other point on 50% not actually being needed, I should have noted something to that effect. And that’s interesting to hear you felt mis-categorized by the Pew quiz! Would be curious how frequent that is.
Good stuff is right!
I think the actual issue is this - it's extremely unlikely that 65% that believe illegal immigration is a big problem is the same 65% that want a path to citizenship and a big chunk of the former don't want the latter and won't vote for the above or that the 63% believe that America is strengthened by its diversity don't completely overlap with the 57% believe that efforts to promote diversity in schools and workplaces have failed to make life more fair and so on and so forth.
Also, agreeing that there's a problem doesn't mean there's any overlap on what the solution is - I'd be among the 76% that gun violence is an issue but my solution and an NRA members solution would basically have no overlap and what overlap there would be would be a band aid on a bullet hole. Same thing w/ the deficit - I do think the deficit is an issue - I think we should fix it with basically reversing all of the tax cuts since Reagan and then only then doing some cuts. Obviously, a Republican is unlikely to agree with that.
Those very split issues are the issues people care a lot about, which is why they become big-time issues and there are lots of people who may say, disagree w/ the Democrats on trans kids in sports or DEI but really care about health care or abortion so they'll never vote for your moderate party even if they code as moderate and vice versa on the Republican side.
It's not a surprise the most successful independent candidate in history needed billionaire money and one issue that was a big issue (free trade) where the other parties were on the same side.
That's what you'd actually need - a situation where both parties were on the same side of an issue - a big chunk of the population was on the other side and it was a high saliency issue. This is unlikely to happen which is why possible independent candidates of the past - ala Trump or Mamdani - would rather take over the parties as opposed to running their own campaigns.
Gabe - This is a brilliant analysis that goes well beyond the surface of the Pew study. What this suggests to me is that the reason that we are split 50-50 politically is because the wings dominate and would rather be right than in power. If the members of one party, across the different policy groups, were willing to compromise on some, but not all, of their principled stances, that party would be able to capture a much larger part of the vote.
However, the engaged partisans are so fixated on either getting everything or making sure that their opposites get nothing, that we end up with the current unstable situation.
It is my opinion that a politician who ran a Clinton-esque (Bill, not Hillary) campaign that was laser-focused on the economy and pushed all other non-economic concerns to the side would have a significant edge over the culture warriors.
The most useful sentence in this piece might be the one that gets the least attention: 'Engagement trumps disengagement every time.' That's not just a national phenomenon. It's the same reason eleven people show up to the zoning meeting and decide what gets built in a town of forty thousand. The eleven aren't a representative sample of the town. They're just the eleven who showed up. National politics runs on the same mechanism at a much bigger scale — the most engaged 20% on each wing are doing the deciding, and the quiet 60% in the middle keeps assuming somebody else will handle it. A centrist party doesn't fail because the agreement isn't there. It fails because agreement without engagement doesn't show up to vote, and showing up is the whole game.
Great idea. End the 250-year-old American experiment by handing victory to the Republican Party by splitting the Democratic vote between Democrats and a third party.
FWIW, I don’t really think there’s any reason to believe the hypothetical “Centrist Party” — which I’m not advocating for, merely exploring what it would look like — would take more Democratic votes than Republican votes. The middle five groups in Pew’s typology are pretty evenly split between the two current party coalitions.
I appreciate your response. I suggest the following. I hope you find this helpful.
There is a centrist party. It's called the Democratic Party. A centrist party is biased in favor of getting to the truth. In Abraham Lincoln's words, the centrist party has faith that right makes might.
A not-centrist party is biased in favor of getting "our" way at "their" expense. The current version of the Republican Party is a not-centrist party. Clearly, the Republican Party has gone "all in" on might makes right, and Lincoln is rolling in his grave.
For literally every unresolved issue, there is a to-be-but-not-yet-discovered win-win resolution. The one (only) obstacle is a bias in favor of getting "our" way at "their" expense.
I was defining centrist as holding neither consistently left-wing nor right-wing policy positions. Of the mix of majority-supported issues I identified to fall into that basket, many of them are supported by Democrats and opposed by Republicans; may others are supported by Republicans and opposed by Democrats.
Your heading toward the true meaning of left-wing (progressive) and right-wing (conservative). When both sides are biased in favor of getting to the truth, conservatives protect the status quo by identifying flaws in the logic the progressive uses to justify a proposed change, then the progressive corrects the flaw, then the process repeats until there are no flaws and both sides agree that the issue has been addressed.
Identifying an issue as specific to one side of the political spectrum is a not-centrist's way of getting "our" way at "their" expense.
Am I overlooking something, or oversimplifying the situation? I don't think I am.
You have to keep in mind that Gabe is amoral and always ignores whether a policy is good or not, both morally and in terms of aligning with what is true.
The truth is often inconvenient in the short term, but it is always convenient in the long term. A falsehood is generally convenient in the short term, but it is always inconvenient in the long term.
Being moral is getting to the truth, which is the second hardest thing a human being can do. Not being moral means living with the long-term consequences of failing to get to the truth which is the hardest thing a human being can do. But why would anyone want that?
See above--Democrats will split within four years after the Republicans do!
Maybe you know something I don't know. Based on what I know, your comment falls in the "idle speculation" category. So, what do you know that I don't know?
You're right, it's speculation. What holds the Democratic party together is its opposition to the Republicans. There is a lot of tension within the party between the "left" and "center-left".
Okay, but that explains your logic. Did you read my responses to Gabe's replies? I think there's an achievable future state where "we the people" are addressing real issues and not made up (aka "wedge") issues.
Oh, heck yeah. If the Democrats have the right message and candidates, they can win very big in '28. In my dream scenario, after that the Republicans break up into MAGA and Reformed MAGA. But the Democrats can hardly stand electoral prosperity--look how quickly Johnson's landslide in '68 turned into McGovern's defeat in '72. Or Carter's in '76 to '80, or Obama's 2012 to 2016, etc.
I’m a lover of all things data and I hugely appreciate you taking the time to do the analysis here and pose such interesting questions to answer with this study’s results.
One limitation that I wanted to note and that your writing seems to take for granted is “voter activity.” While fair to say that so many of the center-leaning groups are less engaged, I think there’s another explanation. Rather than civic engagement being a universal trait, I think it’s more likely that it’s related to enfranchisement (and likely personal risk).
In other words, it’s incomplete to do an analysis of speculating about a different party system without considering that engagement and enfranchisement would markedly be different with such a party in the mix.
Maybe we ought to call it the Independent Party.
Proportional representation (where if a party gets 30% of the vote, it gets 30% of the seats) would allow for multiple centrist parties! Many independents hold very different opinions from the main two parties and each other. PR would allow these ideas to have real sway in Congress
Excellent analysis by Gabe! Well done!
A comment on the survey.... In some cases, nuance is lost in the wording of the question in a survey like Pew's, commendable effort as it is.
For example, I would strongly favor ID (proof-of-citizenship) requirements for voting PROVIDED that all levels of gov't went out of their way to make ID availability easy and uncomplicated, incldg in-person outreach to homebound folks (like during census time), forgiving the cost of IDs for lower-income folks who prefer not to pay or cannot afford it, etc., and PROVIDED that enough time (a couple of election cycles, e.g. 4 years) is allowed before this requirement formally takes effect, so that we ensure almost 100% coverage for all interested voters. (The fact that we have only a 60--67% turnout in most elections is, in my view, a matter of shame for the country as a whole.)
Of course this loss of nuance is understandable - you can't have a paragraph-long Q in an 80-Q survey! I'm just saying...
"These same lessons apply to issues like the measles vaccine (supported by 84% of the country) or transgender athletes participating in the sports teams of their choice (opposed by 73%), both of which are covered as though they are much more contested issues than they are in real life"
This is just one example of grossly dishonest bothsidesism from the author. The GOP has BOTH made anti-vaccines federal policy via RJK Jr. AND uses virulent attacks on transgender people to sow division and paint Democrats as extremists for simply not wanting transgender people to be abused, demonized, have their rights squashed, murdered. The GOP campaigns constantly on "the transgender issue", Democrats virtually not at all. Kamala Harris was even criticized for taking a position against transgender rights as CA AG: https://www.c-span.org/clip/road-to-the-white-house-2020/senator-kamala-harris-record-as-california-ag-comes-under-scrutiny/4775660
Transgender rights played no role in the Harris/Walz campaign *other than* the right wing demonizing Walz as "tampon Tim" for signing a perfectly reasonable law regarding availability of such products “to all menstruating students in restrooms regularly used by students.” (https://www.npr.org/2024/08/07/nx-s1-5066878/tim-walz-tampon-law-minnesota) Over and over, the GOP uses such disgusting vile dishonest propaganda techniques, and over and over the author legitimizes them and magnifies their effect with his bothsidesism, making out like the right wing caricature of Democrats as extremists is reality and equating that to the ACTUAL extremism of the GOP.
"though Sanders has since moved away from his pro-gun, anti-immigration, anti-woke positioning"
This is such an extraordinarily dishonest take of Bernie's views, especially the latter, which in part reflects the ever amoral author's complete failure to understand what "woke" is. Nowhere in the linked Politico article (with its bogus clickbait headline) does Bernie say anything even remotely "anti-woke", nor is criticism of "identity politics" at all the same thing outside the minds of bigots. One can be as woke as can be and still offer criticisms of "identity politics" -- which Bernie did not in fact do, he argued *for* intersectionality between diversity and economics, arguing that pure identity politics is "not good enough" (which itself is a bit of a strawman), candidates must *also* oppose oligarchy.
The majority of Americans agree with Democratic Party policy and disagree with Trump Regime policy (as far as extreme grift, corruption, and retributive weaponization of government can be considered policy).
I’ve got bad news for the “91% view the deficit as a big problem. 81% oppose reducing Social Security benefits.”
The SS deficit can easily be solved by raising the income cap.
"I want to share how much we agree", said NO POLITICAN EVER!
James Talarico says it over and over, and he's not the only one.