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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Teixeira: Wide Net Key to Democrats Midterm Hopes

The following post by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis (cross-posted from his facebook page):

More evidence that Democrats should not confine their efforts to affluent suburbia.

One common view on the struggle to reach white working class voters is that it’s just too damn hard. Democrats are making big progress with educated suburbanites, the argument goes, so it makes sense to clean up among these voters and not worry about those other voters who are so much harder to move.

Wrong. That’s what Nathaniel Rakich shows on 538 by digging into the actual data on 2017-18 special elections.

“It hasn’t quite reached the level of accepted conventional wisdom, but a narrative is starting to take hold that Democrats’ best path to a majority in the U.S. House is through the suburbs. We think the jury is still out, and you should be skeptical of these claims. Yes, Democrats have overperformed in the suburbs, but that’s because they’ve overperformed everywhere. If they’ve outperformed expectations among certain demographics more than others — and the picture is far too fuzzy to say for sure if they have — it’s probably been among working-class voters without college degrees.”

It would thus be foolish to concentrate on only certain kinds of districts and ignore others. In reality, the Democrats have reasonable chances in districts with a wide range of demographics. The only real mistake they can make is not to cast their net widely enough to take advantage of these openings.

One comment on “Teixeira: Wide Net Key to Democrats Midterm Hopes

  1. Francis A. Kornegay, Jr. on

    I am struck by the TDS lack of any really serious attention or analysis to the implications of the ‘Citizenship Question’ on the 2020 Census and how this may or may not affect the gerrymandering disadvantage facing Democrats. Why is this? To what extent can this be reversed? Will cities and states opposed to this question prevail in their legal push-back? Please, we need need more attention to this threat to Democratic electoral prospects,

    Reply

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