Is The Median Democratic Voter Moving To The Left, Or Is The Party Being Pulled To The Left

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday morning. What is this today? Is Jesse On and he’s the vice president of External Affairs for the Manhattan Institute. Well, Jesse, what the heck is going on in New York? I mean, I want, I love, we all love New York. We want New York to succeed and be success successful.

0:20 Speaker 2 I love New York, John, I love New York so much that I’m coming here for you with new numbers, some new numbers from a new poll on the Manhattan from the Manhattan Institute that tells us some pretty interesting things about the Democratic Party. Can I Can I share them with you?

0:35 Speaker 1 Please do that?

0:37 Speaker 2 So there really is a central question confronting today’s Democratic Party, and that is is the median Democratic voter actually moving to the left or is the party being pulled to the left by a smaller activist faction that dominates elite discourse and these low turnout political actions that we have.

1:01 So at the Manhattan Institute, this question has really just been plaguing us. We wanted to get down to the bottom it, so we went out. We surveyed two thousand, five hundred and ninety three respondents, people who were registered Democrats or they voted for Kamala Harris in twenty twenty four.

1:17 And this we also did these big over samples of Hispanic and Black voters to make sure that we’re getting a statistical pull that makes sense from those constituencies which matter a lot in the Democratic electorate. And I’ll tell you, John, our finding point to a Democratic coalition today that is actually often much more moderate, much more internally divided, and

1:39 much more pragmatic than what is found across listening to far left social media or cable news or any of these donor funded groups that propelled Zora Mamdani here in New York City. In fact, more voters in today’s Democratic Coalition favor moving the Democratic Party toward the ideological center than further to the left.

2:02 Speaker 1 So how do we solve this? I mean, there’s a lot of common sense Democrats, but but some of them don’t have the coach to stand up. They’re afraid of the I mean, it seems like the socialist Democrats are a lot more aggressive.

2:20 Speaker 2 Well, here’s the truth, John. The Democratic Party or the Democratic Coalition is best understood as three blocks. The largest block, Moderates, holds about forty seven percent of today’s Democratic coalition. Forty seven percent. That’s nearly half. They’re moderates who hold middle of the road views across many of the most contentious issues in national politics, including immigration, crime, transgender policy, and DEI.

2:50 You’ve got a second block. It’s about thirty seven percent of the Democratic coalition. These are progressive liberals. Okay. These are people who are describe themselves as either a liberal Democrat or a progressive Democrat. They lean left, but they remain closer to the party’s sort of institutional mainstream. And then there’s a third block, a significantly smaller one, coming

3:14 in at about eleven percent of today’s Democratic coalition. You could call that the woke fringe. Okay, this is the group that consistently takes maximalist positions on issues. They’re disproportionately young, they’re much more conspiratorial than the rest of the coalition, and they are really the ones that are motivating a hardcore left wing pull that all of the rest of

3:41 the party seems that they feel that they have to be beholden to go along with.

3:47 Speaker 1 And so where do we go?

3:51 Speaker 2 Well, I think this is the big picture. Across issue areas. You’ve got a coalition whose preferences tend to reflect the structure I laid out before. On immigration, in only one in ten take a true open border’s position. Less than one in four want to see more legal migrants come into the country, and majorities support shifting to prioritize skills

4:12 based immigration and deporting criminals. On public safety, you’ve got a coalition that’s divided across over the criminal justice system in general, but as strongly and aggressive proponents of prosecuting gun crimes in more aggressive ways. They view the police as essential, and they reject political violence. On the transgender thing, most voters support parental notification requirements preventing biological boys from

4:35 participating in girls’ sports, and age limits on medical transitions, meaning you can’t do it below the age of eighteen. On economics, you’ve got a coalition that’s sure they favor the redistribution stuff. They’re favoring consumer protections, but there’s limited appetite for the burn it down politics. There’s concerns about welfare fraud, and there is this new interest in actually

4:57 free trade, maybe as a knee jerk response to what Trump is doing, and some of these other kind of supply side policies. On Israel, you’ve got actually most voters in the Democratic Party who do say the Jewish state has a right to exist, but younger voters are markedly less supportive and more open to anti Semitic tolerance and

5:17 on national identity. More broadly, you do have two and three Democrats who are willing to say they see America as historically a force for good in the world. So what do we do, John, I think the answer is actually fairly straightforward. You’ve got these activist politics who often speak for the most ideologically intense voters, but on many issues,

5:37 the majority of that coalition is with the moderates, often alongside black and Hispanic voters, rather than the party’s most activist faction and the woke fringe. However, it may still exert outside influence in these low turnout primaries and on online discourse. Because this group is younger, it represents a plausible source of the future, a source of ideological change

6:00 potential for that party. But it is not the median position today, and Democratic elected officials should know that. They should know that their voters want them to move toward the center, and they’ve got to stand up to the fringe.

6:12 Speaker 1 Well, Jesse Arms, I pray for New York and I agree with you one hundred percent and let’s talk to again real soon.

6:20 Speaker 2 I pray for the Democrats, John, I even pray for the Democrats. Great talking to you, Thanks for having me