Applying all appropriate caveats about methodology and sample size, it’s worth looking at Nate Cohn’s effort to identify the tiny sliver of truly persuadable voters who undecided between Donald Trump and the Democratic Party’s eventual presidential candidate in 2020. It’s not just interesting to see who these people are but also what they like from a policy perspective.
One thing is not surprising:
A disproportionate number of persuadable voters tend to be low-turnout voters as well: 28 percent didn’t vote in both 2016 and 2018, compared with 17 percent of those who say there’s no chance they’ll vote for the other side.
Low information voters don’t vote as often because politics are not a central part of their lives. Many of these folks couldn’t tell you who Mike Pence is or what Nancy Pelosi does for a living. They may be totally unaware that there are impeachment proceedings underway in the House of Representatives.
The first challenge is to get them to vote at all, and there’s a decent chance that you should leave them alone because they might well vote for your opponent. Yet, they probably will determine who wins and loses the 2020 election.
When you delve into the numbers, keep in mind that Cohn presents the data in a bit of a confusing way. He really has two definitions of persuadable voters. One represents 15 percent of the electorate and the other represents only 9 percent. The former leans Republican and the latter leans Democratic. The difference is that the larger 15 percent pool doesn’t exclude people who chose Trump over all the Democratic alternatives or vice-versa, while the smaller 9 percent pool strips these partisan leaners out.
At different points in the article, Cohn discusses the issue preferences of both groups, and those preferences often diverge.
On the whole, though, these voters are not ripe for progressive messaging. The larger group is particularly unpromising:
As a group they are 57 percent male and 72 percent white, and 35 percent have college degrees. Most, 69 percent, say they usually vote for a mix of both Democratic and Republican candidates. Among those who voted in 2016, 48 percent say they voted for Mr. Trump, 33 percent for Hillary Clinton, and 19 percent for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein or no one. Those who voted in the midterm election voted for the Republican congressional candidate by one point…
…They prefer [a Democrat], by 82 percent to 11 percent, who promises to find common ground over one who promises to fight for a progressive agenda; and they prefer a moderate over a liberal, 75 percent to 19 percent.
Over all, 40 percent describe themselves as conservative, compared with 16 percent who say they’re liberal. Forty percent are moderate.
Mr. Trump leads Ms. Warren, 49 percent to 27 percent, among this broadly defined group of persuadable voters, slightly improving on his margin over Mrs. Clinton. He holds a narrow 43-37 edge over Mr. Biden, a slight improvement for the president over the Republican performance in the midterm election but far from matching his tallies in 2016.
The smaller 9 percent group is slightly better:
These truly persuadable voters supported Democratic congressional candidates in 2018 by eight points and have less developed views on the presidential race. They support Mr. Biden over the president, 38 percent to 27 percent, but prefer the president to Ms. Warren, 37 to 20. Mr. Sanders is in between, with the president leading him, 34 percent to 32 percent. This group voted for Mr. Trump by a smaller margin in 2016, 37 percent to 30 percent, with the rest casting ballots for minor candidates.
One specific issues, it kind of depends on which group you want to focus on. College-educated whites are not looking for a Warren/Sanders platform:
The white college-educated persuadable voters, in either the broad or narrow definition, have something in common: They may not love the president, but they are not sold on progressives.
They oppose single-payer health care, 60 percent to 37 percent, and oppose free college, 55 to 41.
Here’s a fuller picture:
Persuadable men and women generally hold similar views on the issues, including on the president. But they are deeply split over an assault weapons ban, with persuadable women supporting an assault weapons ban by a 26-point margin and persuadable men opposed by 18 points — including 42 percent of undecided men who say they are strongly opposed.
The undecided white working-class voters often seem as if they would be quite receptive to Democrats based on their views on the issues. They support single-payer health care, for instance.
But they approve of the president’s performance by a comfortable 63-32 margin, and they are as about as conservative as Republicans on the cultural issues that divide today’s politics. By a margin of 84 percent to 9 percent, they say political correctness has gone too far. They say academics and journalists look down on people like them, and agree that discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against minorities.
That doesn’t really provide a roadmap for the Democratic nominee. Promoting an assault weapons ban looks like a wash, while Medicare-for-All only seems to appeal to people who strongly approve of the president’s performance and seem to hold some pretty racist views.
It’s not entirely clear why Biden polls so much better than the others among the persuadable, nor why Sanders outperforms Warren. The general conservative lean of the group might bring some sexist attitudes, but Warren lags even among the more Democratic-leaning smaller sample.
The strongest warning sign is obviously here: “They prefer [a Democrat], by 82 percent to 11 percent, who promises to find common ground over one who promises to fight for a progressive agenda; and they prefer a moderate over a liberal, 75 percent to 19 percent.”
These are not partisan voters in any normal sense and their numbers seem small enough that they could perhaps be ignored, especially since many of them will not ultimately vote at all. But, actually, it’s likely that they’d decide any truly close election.
Maybe the worst part is that they don’t pay any attention, so any idea you might have of moving them on the issues through good messaging or campaigning is probably doomed to failure. Weakening up Trump is probably the best option available for reaching them, and that process is already underway with a big assist from the president himself.
Personally, I align with Warren on the issues better than any of the other candidates, but I can’t help but pause in the face of numbers like these, since they seem to be a bright blinking-red warning sign that a real progressive is not what the people presently want.
Finally! Been trying to find approval ratings out of this sample forever. Is this a sliver of undecideds, or the entire group of “working class whites”?
If the entire group of non-college whites hit by Cohn approves of him at 63%, then forget it. They’re not persuadables at all and they’ll vote for him at around 63% when the chips fall down. This also means high turnout is bad for Wisconsin, but Wisconsin is already pretty maxed out on a consistent basis. If the nation is 65-70%, how much higher can they get? They already hit 70-72% in presidentials.
Why is Wisconsin and Ohio any different than NY and California? Is it related to the the larger urban and suburban population or something? Does it mean we just freaking give up on progressive ideas in some states?
Good questions. And entire books have been written about them.
But briefly: different states can have differing demographics, economics, and politics. All three (demographics, economics, politics) are related to, and influence each other.
No (imho), it doesn’t mean we “give up on progressive ideas in some states”. It does mean different states call for different tactics and strategies. (See David Dayen’s fascinating and well-reported article, “The New Uprising on a Country Road”, for a good example of fighting for progressive ideas in “deep red” West Virginia.
Finally, it helps to have some perspective: in 1988 CA was the keystone to Republican national dominance while WV went solidly for Dukakis. Times change; people change; politics changes.
As I understand this is a sliver of undecideds out of six battleground states and includes all those that fit the criteria of undecided regardless of demographics. So there are college educated, WWC etc. it is based on a sample of 569 respondents who are undecided. I am not personally certain the results are valid. But assuming they are then Warren or Sanders could be a problem. Biden or Mayor Pete not so much. I’d like to see some further analysis.
I doubt the people will ever truly support a progressive candidate or agenda and they will also almost always like Joe best since he is thought bi partisan. It only makes me believe more strongly that to get a progressive agenda you probably need a by gawd bad recession. It is depressing but a depression works best. It means that fifty years after all major countries in the world got universal health care it is still too liberal for us. We have been trained well.
Apparently, this isn’t even true historically. What happens in a depression is that people reject the party in power, no matter what it is. So, if you have a conservative government, they get replaced by progressives. But, if you have a left-wing government, they get replaced by a right-wing government. In the 30s, the U.S. went right-to-left, but other countries (like the UK and Germany) went left-to-right. So if you want progressive government, you need to time your depressions correctly, otherwise you are just as likely to get fascism.
So, throw the bums out if the economy goes to hell. Makes sense. Does the reverse work as well? The economy is doing well so let’s do it again? Moody’s seems to think so and says Trump should win big, even a landslide. I think it is always true that the populace will want to throw the bums out if things get bad. I’m not sure it necessarily follows you get fascism, but you get change. We once got FDR. What did we do to deserve the Orange Cheeto? Just maybe we did nothing or not enough after the Great Recession and promised nothing.
The data suggest that voters vote on the basis of how good the economy is in the months right before the election, but they don’t pay attention to how good the economy was over the entire presidential term. If the economy levels off, the “good” economy over the past 3 years will not be a benefit to Trump.
I wouldn’t pay too much attention to the Moody’s model, or any model that tries to make strong predictions based on the past. There have only been a small number of presidential elections. It’s not a lot of data points to verify a model. The Moody’s model suggests that Trump has certain advantages based on being an incumbent and the fact that the economy isn’t total sh*t. But we already knew that.
Incidentally, I am basing my comments on my reading of the book Democracy for Realists, by Achen & Bartels. An interesting book…I recommend it.
I read the book review on Amazon. Sounds a little like this article with perhaps persuadable voters. It is easy to understand the short term focus of so many. We are all like that in many ways.
True that is just exactly the way it is. But Moody’s acknowledges that a change in the economy for the worse or large voter turnout could change the predicted result. But they say if it stays this way- meaning supportive of the consumer, low unemployment and strong financial markets -Trump has a distinct advantage. Given what Martin has written, in this article, Id have to agree. But that doesn’t mean we give up. In fact to me it is quite the opposite.
Good post & interesting thread. Thanks, Martin & all.
My first reaction is to reemphasize the old (but never out of date) observation that we—people who read and comment on blogs like the Pond—are not like most people. The vast majority of our fellow citizens—for a wide variety of reasons—don’t pay nearly as much attention to politics as we do.
Second thought: Go back and re-read Martin’s post while dividing the percentages (other than the 15% and the 9% of “persuadables”) by 10 (So, for example, the 9% group “…support Mr. Biden over the president, 3.8 percent to 2.7 percent, but prefer the president to Ms. Warren, 3.7 to 2.0. Mr. Sanders is in between, with the president leading him, 3.4 percent to 3.2 percent.”), because when we’re talking about actual votes cast, those are roughly the percentages we’re talking about.
Third thought: On the one hand these are tiny, marginal differences. On the other hand, many elections are won on the margins (see: Trump, 2016).
Final thought: if Warren gets the nomination, she (and we) would likely be better served by a general election campaign that (relative to the primary campaign so far) places more emphasis on her biography and less on her ideas for big, structural change.
Genuine question. Isn’t every group of voters, to some degree, persuadable? So if we spend too much time persuading Demographic X to vote for us, we’ll necessarily be persuading Demographic Y to not vote for us?
I wouldn’t say this is always true, but that’s what politics is, in the end: balancing your supporters in pursuit of power and adding people to build your power. In fact, The Economist has an article out recently arguing there’s not many persuadables at all, and opinions change mostly through attrition (marijuana legalization and gay marriage being the two exceptions).
That 9% sliver is the true persuadable. They voted for Trump at 48% in 2016. What is their approval of him? I can’t find it in the piece. If they still approve of him at 48%, he’s going to get 48% of them.
So if the Democratic nominee rails against gay marriage and in favor of Blue Lives Matter, that wouldn’t persuade some D voters to stay home?
It probably would. But you’d get a lot of net votes out of it in an environment like 2020 because turnout is going to be through the roof.
It would also probably kill you in Arizona, Texas, and endanger the Democratic House majority (probably not but losing seats would seem likely). On the other hand, it’d help down ballot in rural places.
This is a question for the analytics people. From the polling we can see, I don’t think being racist would help much because these people love the president and wouldn’t leave him even if you offered racism and health care. This also means single payer is probably an overall net vote loser, as is free college. But having his approval among this group would at least give a ceiling. Judging by Warren’s numbers (49-27), they don’t like women and a more moderate one wouldn’t help much.
Unless demographic Y doesn’t give a shit which could be very possible.
That leaves me Buttigieg, Booker, Klobuchar, and Biden. Of those, I will take the one with the best campaigner and campaign. I think that means Pete, but I would love a Klobuchar surge.