Five Overlooked Maps that Explain the Future of the Democratic Party
In the run up to the 2022 midterm elections, the Democratic party finds itself in an intriguing position. The legislative accomplishments of the first two years of the Biden administration, made possible by narrow Democratic control of both the House and Senate, are impressive in their own right. They have led many to remark that Biden’s approach toward compromise with the Republican party has borne fruit, and proven that even in today’s environment of political fractiousness, governing from the center is still possible. But Biden’s low approval ratings and the tendency of the president’s party to lose congressional seats in the midterm elections could mean that this unusually productive 117th Congress will be replaced by a far less productive 118th if Republicans win control of either chamber in November.
While the Republican party finds itself locked in an identity crisis that grows more rigid by the day, with Trump loyalists whose political convictions are increasingly defined by conspiracy theories on one side and traditional Republicans who would like to see the party return to its roots as one of limited government and business interests on the other, the Democratic party finds itself in a rare place of opportunity to redefine itself and win new voters to its cause. That is, only if they can overcome their historical tendency that is perhaps best summarized by the quote, “Democrats never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”
But how should they seize this opportunity? There is no shortage of columnists spouting opinions about how they can most effectively move forward: should they target their efforts at engaging voters of color, or should they focus on what have often been called as kitchen table issues, like the economy, education, and concerns of working parents? Concerns about the cost of health care, prescription drugs, availability of affordable housing, and support for union organizing efforts are generally seen as politically popular. This is arguably because they are grounded in improving people’s material circumstances, while lashing out at the ‘global elite,’ sentiments tapped by Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders alike.
While polls and columnists’ analyses of what is politically popular at a given moment have their place in the conversation, the latter half of the 2010s have taught us that polls are often wrong, and sometimes wildly so. In this article, I will focus on elections that actually happened (in the form of Democratic primaries) to highlight the present disconnects within the Democratic party. Each primary contest comprises a small piece of the fight for the soul of and future direction of the party, and this article aims to highlight some of the key messages Democratic voters are giving party leaders.
The 2016 Wisconsin Democratic Primary
Few states have risen to prominence in the national political conversation faster than Wisconsin has since the 2016 general election. Once considered a safe state for Democrats, part of the so-called ‘Blue Wall’ that dramatically crumbled when tested by Donald Trump, the truth is that Wisconsin has always been something of a national bellwether. Indeed, it is the only state that has been decided by less than single point in four of the last six presidential elections. Accordingly, a closer look at how it voted in the 2016 Democratic primary between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders is a worthwhile exercise that received scant attention at the time. Clinton’s and Bernie’s messages were of very different flavors, Clinton’s focusing on generally continuing the economic and social policies advanced by the Obama administration (who won Wisconsin twice by comfortable margins), while Sanders called for a break from the neoliberal economic policies that he saw as hurting the middle class. One of those messages played much better in Wisconsin than the other.
In this first map of five, the message from voters couldn’t be clearer: Clinton carried just one of Wisconsin’s 72 counties, and even in populous Milwaukee County, she won by less than four points. Articles at the time acknowledged Sander’s significant victory statewide by more than thirteen points, but conceded that such a strong showing in the crucial but moderately sized state would do little to change the delegate math between him and Clinton in the face of larger primaries on the calendar like New York’s.
Thus, a critical warning of the rebellion against the corporate wing of the Democratic party visibly represented by Clinton was lost in the shuffle. It’s hard to imagine strategists in the Clinton camp poring over this primary map and concluding that she was electorally secure enough in the state to not pay Wisconsin a single visit in the 2016 election cycle, but with hindsight, it appears that is indeed what happened. Later analyses found that significant numbers of Sanders’ primary voters switched their allegiance to Trump in the general election across the ‘Blue Wall’ states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, in great enough numbers to flip each those states from Clinton’s column to Trump’s (in Wisconsin, they estimated there were 51,000 of these Sanders-Trump voters, and Trump carried the state by only 23,000 votes).
The lesson here is clear: many voters, perhaps especially so in swingier states like Wisconsin, are not loyal to either major political party, and their votes are up for grabs by the candidate of either party has a message that resonates with them. It’s important that parties listen to the will of the voters and which messages are resonating them (with special attention paid to those in swing states) when significant rifts between wings of the party arise. A 2020 article describing seven political states of Wisconsin can be instructive to Democrats moving forward. While Clinton’s appeal was largely limited to just one of those seven regions (Milwaukee County), Sanders showed strength in all of the others. These facts were ignored by the party at the time, but should not be overlooked again.
The 2020 Iowa Caucasus
The 2020 Iowa caucuses were the first opportunity post-2016 when the Democratic party once again offered voters different flavors of the party on which to cast their allegiance. Unfortunately, much of the message on caucus night got lost in the shuffle when problems with the party’s vote counting technology made results unavailable for days, leading both Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg to declare victory. While the technology issues were real and two candidates declaring victory stole the show for days afterward, including suggestions that the debacle should strip Iowa of its unique right to hold the first-in-the-nation caucus, the preferences of Democratic caucus-goers received short shrift.
Consider the five leading candidates heading into caucus night according to the trusted Des Moines Register poll: Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, and Amy Klobuchar. Sanders, despite his near tie in the state with Clinton in 2016 and widespread support in counties across the state, struggled to repeat his feat in 2020. This time, Sanders carried just 20 of Iowa’s 99 counties, and the counties he did win were disproportionately urban (indeed, Sanders carried seven of the ten most populated counties in the state). What he didn’t carry were as many rural counties as he had in 2016. These counties largely flipped to Buttigieg.
While Buttigieg was eventually declared the winner of the Iowa caucuses by a hair of a delegate, his widespread geographic support dwarfed any other candidates.’ In the crowded caucus field, Buttigieg carried more than half (57) of Iowa’s counties outright, and tied in six of the eight officially tied counties. Sander’s and Buttigieg’s widespread geographic victories appears to have come largely at the expense of Warren, who polled close to them but who managed to scrape by winning just a single county on caucus night. Bringing up the rear on caucus night were Biden and Klobuchar, who won just eight and five counties respectively.
What can the party learn from the technological disaster but politically instructive night in early February? The message on the salience of political centrism is mixed, since Buttigieg performed well while Biden and Klobuchar did not. Sander’s and Warren’s progressivism was embraced more urban and educated Iowans, but struggled in smaller towns and rural areas around the state. Warren’s dramatically collapse received some attention but perhaps not enough. More than any other candidate, she was hobbled by her inability to connect with non-college and non-white voters, winning only the county home to Iowa City and the University of Iowa, long viewed as a political outlier in the state (it was the only county in the state popular former Republican governor Terry Branstad failed to carry in any of his statewide runs for office). The emergent lesson here was also clear: a populist approach to progressivism embodied by Sanders is far more poignant to voters than the technocratic alternative offered by Warren, and the centrist approach found a stronger standard bearer in Buttigieg than in long-term senators like Biden and Klobuchar.
The 2020 Massachusetts Democratic Primary
Massachusetts, perhaps more than any other single state, is a bastion of progressive politics. The victor of the Democratic primary contest for the state’s House and Senate seats is almost guaranteed to be sent to Washington in the general election. In 2020, Representative Joe Kennedy III challenged the incumbent Ed Markey for his seat in the Senate, and ultimately failed to do so. But some important details of the race were overlooked.
In the 2020 cycle, younger progressives did challenge and defeat a number of Democratic incumbents. Marie Newman in Illinois, Cori Bush in Missouri, and Jamaal Bowman in New York each unseated long serving representatives in urban districts in Chicago, St. Louis, and New York City. There were however a couple of key differences with the Massachusetts contest: Each of these races were on the House rather than Senate side, and Kennedy III was not running significantly to the left of Markey. While there was some disagreement over which candidate held the more progressive mantle early in the race, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsement of Markey ultimately solidified their differing ideological positions in the race. Kennedy III then appeared to largely be running on his family’s name and legacy as a prominent political family in the state, with at least one member serving in federal elected office continuously from 1947 to 201l. His argument largely came down to the idea that he as a 39-year-old could leverage the Senate seat more effectively than the 74-year-old Markey.
Early polling before the election forecast a close race, but saw Markey pulling ahead by summer. One of the largest demographic divides in support for each candidate in late summer polling was on the basis of education. For those without a four-year degree, voters reported favoring Kennedy III by 15 points and voters with four-year degrees reported favoring Markey by 37 points. Geographically, Markey cleaned up in progressive towns and the Boston metro area, especially in places won by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren six months earlier in the Democratic presidential primary. Kennedy III found his strength in what have been designated Massachusetts’ gateway cities by the state legislature. These 26 cities are largely midsize urban centers with histories of industry and manufacturing that have fallen on harder economic times. Kennedy III won in 21 of the 26, including Springfield, Worcester, Fall River, and Lowell.
The margin in the race was 11 points, a decisive win for Markey to be sure, but worth putting in context. Massachusetts is the most educated state in the country, with 45 percent of adults over 25 years of age holding a four-year degree, compared to 33 percent nationally. If the polls of the race based on voter preference by educational attainment are to be believed (and the town-by-town results suggest they can be), Markey would have faced a much tougher challenge in any other state than he did in Massachusetts. Kennedy III’s message evidently resonated more with less educated voters, which exist in far greater numbers everywhere else in the country.
The 2021 New York City Mayoral Democratic Primary
Like Massachusetts, New York City is also seen as progressive relative to the country. The current roster of progressive firebrands it has sent to Congress includes AOC, Jamaal Bowman, and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. What makes it somewhat different from Massachusetts is its greater racial diversity, higher numbers of immigrants, and educational attainment statistics that are less of an anomaly nationally. These factors proved important in Eric Adams’ victory in the Democratic primary for mayor.
A crowded field of Democratic candidates emerged to fill the seat of outgoing mayor Bill de Blasio included nationally recognized names like Andrew Yang, who was leading in early polling. As the electoral contest approached, however, other names emerged and began consolidating their own support. Kathryn Garcia and Maya Wiley emerged as two progressives in the race, as did the less progressive and more pragmatic former NYPD officer and captain Eric Adams. The primary race featured rank choice voting, whereby a voter’s second and third choice preferences would be taken into account if their higher choices were eliminated in an earlier round. In the first round of voting, Adams won more than twice as many of the city’s Election Districts as did Garcia, his closest competitor. In the eighth and final round, Adams would ultimately nudge out Garcia by only a point, since a disproportionate of Wiley and Yang voters had ranked her above Adams.
Some fascinating demographic analysis has been done on each of the major candidates’ coalitions in the wake of the election. Eric Adams found his greatest strength with Black and Latino voters, Wiley did with white and Latino voters, Yang found his with white and Asian voters, and Garcia’s coalition was largely white alone. A distinct socioeconomic gap also emerged between the candidates, with Garcia winning all eight of the city’s wealthiest assembly districts, while Adams won in all ten of the city’s poorest assembly districts. FiveThirtyEight devised a useful framework, the five political boroughs of New York City, to contextualize the race. Once precinct level results were released, it found that Adams had won three of these five, winning in the True-Blue Bronx, the Black Bloc, and Crossroads. Garcia won in Elite Circles, and Yang carried the Lands of Contradiction. Adams’ success in the outer boroughs contrasted with Garcia’s and Wiley’s bases of support in Manhattan and along the East River in Queens & Brooklyn, respectively.
While the final tally was quite close, Adams prevailing against two progressive challengers showed that Democrats focused more on pragmatic issues do win in even the most progressive places. Adams’ relative strength with Black and Latino voters demonstrated the ongoing importance of diverse outer-borough political alliances. While Wiley’s New Deal New York proposal found traction amongst more affluent New Yorkers, Adams focused on issues closer to home for working class New Yorkers worried about crime. His exact politics were hard to pinpoint, but running on an anti-elite platform, decrying the “fancy candidates” who were favored in Manhattan convinced voters he was someone in touch with their concerns.
The 2022 Democratic Primary in Texas’s 28th District
In a light blue House district in South Texas, an embattled conservative Democrat faced a tough primary challenge from a young progressive this past summer. Jessica Cisneros, a 29-year old immigration lawyer came within a point of unseating longtime Representative Henry Cuellar in a runoff two years after she first challenged him. Cuellar has found himself increasingly out of line with the national Democratic party, holding conservative views on abortion, immigration and gun control. While he believes that his positions are aligned with those of his largely Latino district stretching from Laredo in the Rio Grande Valley to east suburban San Antonio, Cisneros has championed Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and pro-labor legislation.
Some external factors also made this a race to watch. Less than two months before the primary in March, the FBI raided his Laredo home in connection to a criminal investigation. While he hasn’t been charged with a crime, Cisneros used it as an opportunity to paint him as a corrupt politician. Throughout the primary contest, Cuellar retained the support of heavy hitters in the House, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and majority whip Jim Clyburn.
South Texas has also featured prominently in recent soul searching by the Democratic Party, following Trump’s substantial electoral gains in the region in 2020 compared to 2016. Indeed, counties in the Rio Grande Valley like Starr, Zapata, Maverick shifted toward Trump by more than twenty points in just four years. Even though Starr and Maverick were still won by Clinton and Biden, Zapata flipped to Trump, highlighting how quickly many Latinos are switching their political loyalties. This trend is concerning many Democrats in Texas and beyond, and in a region where many middle class jobs come in the form of law enforcement officers and border patrol agents, progressive party rhetoric feels increasingly out of touch.
In the race for the 28th district, which is centered on Laredo but does not encompass the whole Rio Grande Valley, the March primary went to a runoff in June, which Cuellar won by a couple hundred votes out of more than 45,000 cast. What’s more telling than the margin of his victory is where his votes came from. Cuellar bested Cisneros in every county in the valley by landslide margins. In Webb County (home to Laredo) for example, he won by 38 points. Cisneros found her strength in the district in portions of Bexar and Guadalupe counties abutting San Antonio, where she beat Cuellar handily. The regional bifurcation of support for these candidates is a curious phenomenon. Like trends we’ve seen elsewhere, there appears to be a divide between progressive more educated voters and less progressive less educated voters.
What Do These Maps Tell Us?
As the Democratic party engages in its own soul searching between its progressive and moderate wings, many analyses of the divide seem focused on discerning whether progressive or moderate candidates fare better in elections. When considering the question this broadly, you can find evidence in favor of candidates espousing progressive views, as well as evidence in favor of more moderation. These articles tend to overlook two important aspects: the importance of the state or district in question, and the ability of a given candidate to connect with working class voters.
Let’s consider the joint importance of state or district and strength of candidate as it relates to these five maps. In Wisconsin in 2016 and Massachusetts in 2020, the more progressive candidate won, while in Iowa in 2020, New York City in 2021, and Texas’s 28th in 2022, the more moderate candidate won. Sanders’ victory in Wisconsin can be attributed to his better ability to connect with working class voters relative to Clinton’s, while Markey’s victory in Massachusetts appeared to have more to do with his political views being a better fit for his state. While the moderates’ victories in each of the other three cases were narrow, they all won by assembling a coalition that was more geographically and socioeconomically (and racially in the case of New York City) diverse than their progressive challengers.
Chuck Schumer famously remarked in the summer of 2016 responding to Clinton’s campaign strategy, “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.” Ridiculed after Trump’s victory, the Democrats are still struggling to win the support of their traditional working class base. While there is no magic formula that will win them back, putting forth candidates who play well in places where they live is a good place to start.
How can the Democrats find these winning candidates? In some ways, it’s deceptively simple: Promote the candidate that wins the primary votes of non-college voters. After all, these voters comprise the majority of the population in every state and nearly every district. With so much data from primaries over the past few cycles to pore over, finding common attributes amongst candidates who connected with these voters (whether the candidates themselves are more progressive or more moderate) would be a worthwhile exercise. With the Republican party teetering in a precarious position due to its own internal divisions, Democrats currently have a once in a generation opportunity to forge a majority governing coalition that is broad and inclusive enough to sustain itself. Will their own divisions along educational lines foreclose this chance, or will they prove adept enough at listening to seize this remarkable opportunity?
