Exclusive: Top House Democrat Unveils Plan to Beat Back Progressive Rebellion

[ancianita]

136. Thank you for your on-the-ground history of in-party dynamics. It's eye-opening.

I forgot about Justice Democrats. None of that was stated in the OP, either. So I do get that they could, left alone, do damage to mainstream Dems if the 81 million voted for a mainstream Democrat, and even the Progressive Caucus.

I defer to your judgment on this. I'll check out those candidates myself. I'm also going to keep in mind that if we want to increase GOTV, Democratic voters deserve more clarity from leadership about why they turn down Democratic primary candidates, or don't develop more in states like VA and WV.

There's an ugliness in your story -- the whole anti-semitism and racist stuff -- that just pisses me off. I hate to hear that that happened to you.
I don't want to be some bystander in some morally corrupt game. So I've also been reading Politics Is for Power: How to Move Beyond Political Hobbyism, Take Action and Make Real Change by Eitan Hersh (Scribner 2020) about how mainstream Democrats can improve, and will share it at another time.

Here's Pew's breakdown of the 2020 win and what percents of demographics tfg and Biden won more of.

I know it's about the general, but the numbers seem instructive for the 2020 midterms, since the same new and non-voters who turned up in 2018 for Dems turned up again in 2020. Yet we keep doubting they'll turn up in this next midterm -- or the media play that angle -- because it remains to be seen whether gains for Trump will be down because of covid despite red state gerrymandering, statehouse structural personnel changes and mail in ballot suppressions.

Biden made gains with suburban voters. In 2020, Biden improved upon Clinton’s vote share with suburban voters: 45% supported Clinton in 2016 vs. 54% for Biden in 2020.
This shift was also seen among White voters: Trump narrowly won White suburban voters by 4 points in 2020 (51%-47%); he carried this group by 16 points in 2016 (54%-38%). At the same time, Trump grew his vote share among rural voters.
In 2016, Trump won 59% of rural voters, a number that rose to 65% in 2020.

Trump made gains among Hispanic voters. Even as Biden held on to a majority of Hispanic voters in 2020, Trump made gains among this group overall. There was a wide educational divide among Hispanic voters: Trump did substantially better with those without a college degree than college-educated Hispanic voters (41% vs. 30%).

Apart from the small shift among Hispanic voters, Joe Biden’s electoral coalition looked much like Hillary Clinton’s, with Black, Hispanic and Asian voters and those of other races casting about four-in-ten of his votes.
Black voters remained overwhelmingly loyal to the Democratic Party, voting 92%-8% for Biden.
Biden made gains with men, while Trump improved among women, narrowing the gender gap.
The gender gap in the 2020 election was narrower than it had been in 2016, both because of gains that Biden made among men and because of gains Trump made among women. In 2020, men were almost evenly divided between Trump and Biden, unlike in 2016 when Trump won men by 11 points. Trump won a slightly larger share of women’s votes in 2020 than in 2016 (44% vs. 39%), while Biden’s share among women was nearly identical to Clinton’s (55% vs. 54%).

Biden improved over Clinton among White non-college voters. White voters without a college degree were critical to Trump’s victory in 2016, when he won the group by 64% to 28%. In 2018, Democrats were able to gain some ground with these voters, earning 36% of the White, non-college vote to Republicans’ 61%. In 2020, Biden roughly maintained Democrats’ 2018 share among the group, improving upon Clinton’s 2016 performance by receiving the votes of 33%. But Trump’s share of the vote among this group – who represented 42% of the total electorate this year – was nearly identical to his vote share in 2016 (65%).

Biden grew his support with some religious groups while Trump held his ground. Both Trump and Biden held onto or gained with large groups within their respective religious coalitions. Trump’s strong support among White evangelical Protestants ticked up (77% in 2016, 84% in 2020) while Biden got more support among atheists and agnostics than did Clinton in 2016.

After decades of constituting the majority of voters, Baby Boomers and members of the Silent Generation made up less than half of the electorate in 2020 (44%), falling below the 52% they constituted in both 2016 and 2018. Gen Z and Millennial voters favored Biden over Trump by margins of about 20 points, while Gen Xers and Boomers were more evenly split in their preferences. Gen Z voters, those ages 23 and younger, constituted 8% of the electorate, while Millennials and Gen Xers made up 47% of 2020 voters.

A record number of voters reported casting ballots by mail in 2020 – including many voters who said it was their first time doing so. Nearly half of 2020 voters (46%) said they had voted by mail or absentee, and among that group, about four-in-ten said it was their first time casting a ballot this way. Hispanic and White voters were more likely than Black voters to have cast absentee or mail ballots, while Black voters were more likely than White or Hispanic voters to have voted early in person. Urban and suburban voters were also more likely than rural voters to have voted absentee or by mail ballot.

This analysis is based on a survey of 11,818 members of Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel conducted Nov. 12-17, 2020, shortly after the general election. It also draws on surveys conducted among 10,640 panelists from Nov. 7-16, 2018, after the midterm election that year and 4,183 panelists from Nov. 29 to Dec. 12, 2016, after the general election. Researchers attempted to match the panelists to three different commercial voter files that contain official records of voter registration and turnout for 2016, 2018 and 2020.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/06/30/behind-bidens-2020-victory/