Analysis shows as Centrist Dems move right, the more they lose

[Chromatican 4,046]

Just now, pachinko said:

I agree. Bernie would have lost against Trump, sadly. 

He probably would’ve won?

[pachinko 10,766]

Just now, Chromatican said:

He probably would’ve won?

The country is not ready for such a progressive platform. Look at the popular vote. Trump didn't lose by much. 

[Chromatican 4,046]

1 minute ago, pachinko said:

The country is not ready for such a progressive platform. Look at the popular vote. Trump didn't lose by much. 

Joe Biden is not progressive though? He ran of civility and fracking. Can’t imagine why that didn’t get him a bigger win. 

[pachinko 10,766]

2 minutes ago, Chromatican said:

Joe Biden is not progressive though? He ran of civility and fracking. Can’t imagine why that didn’t get him a bigger win. 

Exactly. Joe barely won. Bernie would have been creamed. 

[Chromatican 4,046]

3 minutes ago, pachinko said:

Exactly. Joe barely won. Bernie would have been creamed. 

Funny how in 2016 Bernie supporters were powerful enough to swing the election and now we would’ve been creamed by Trump even though Bernie’s M4A plan would’ve been more popular than ever during a pandemic.

[Gagaloo911 12,959]

28 minutes ago, pachinko said:

I agree. Bernie would have lost against Trump, sadly. 

This is literally the opposite of what the analysis demonstrates and shows, but okay lmao.

In fact, based on this analysis, Biden almost surely underperforms and would have done better had he been strongly advocating for progressive policies.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, StarstruckIllusion said:

I’m still laughing at the fact that Florida said “ehh we’ll take the progressive economy strategy, but not the candidate” when they secured Bernie’s living wage  

This is a prime-example of how people are very much open to progressive policies. They are accepted even in states like Florida but voters are unfortunately blinded by how the media is representing their candidates. If the media were more Sanders-friendly and didn’t scare so many centrist voters by pushing the socialism-agenda he would have been able to mobilize even Republicans. It‘s a pity they screwed him over just bc Sanders isn‘t afraid of critizing CNN and calling them out. It‘s that kind of critical appeal towards American media empires that is so desperately needed in order to restore the trust in media overall. Because the damage is already done and too many people rather trust a person’s false fraud claims and refuse to believe what everyone in the media is saying. That‘s extremely dangerous bc people are getting told that nothing they see from the news can be trusted. You don‘t solve that problem and restore trust in media within the population by not issuing the favorism of all the media outlets. I doubt Biden is going to do that and actively starting an open discourse where also Republican voters feel like they‘re heard.

[Chromatica 7,042]

I’m not so sure.

My district’s representative is the one with the largest margin of defeat on that chart. This was his first term and he flipped my traditionally red district by appealing to its red demographic with his military background and his moderate policy proposals. His loss this year has been largely attributed to his participating in a defund the police rally and voting to impeach President Trump. I can guarantee you a more progressive candidate would’ve never been elected, but if they were, they would’ve lost by a greater margin.

Thats just one example and it may very well be an outlier here, but some food for thought. Correlation does not equal causation, all of these districts have very different stories.

[caulixtla 2,170]

1 hour ago, Gagaloo911 said:

An analysis of the US 2020 election results found that the more a Democratic candidate moved to the right (see: moderate and centrist Dems), the worse they performed. Even as progressive candidates performed better, and all won their races.

 

That’s interesting. How do their figures compensate for the fact that democrats who veer to the center are in more red districts? Has this study been peer reviewed? Considering that the study was commissioned by “Justice Democrats and the Sunrise Movement” and hasn’t been published in a peer reviewed journal (or even analyzed by Nate Silver/Nate Cohn/The Cook Political Report), and the source for the study is a tweet and self-published article, I will remain skeptical until it’s more thoroughly vetted.

Until I can look at the study and see how they correct for how red or blue the district candidates are in, the only conclusion I can safely say is that the study is showing that voters are becoming more polarized. Considering we don’t even have final voting tallies (e.g. the thread I started on AZ’s results, which are as I type this far from final), any conclusion based on November 2020 results is unreliable.

The issue I have with the far left is the same issue I have with the far right: Is the goal here to look at the evidence and come to an objective conclusion based on the evidence? Or is the goal to have an already decided on conclusion, only accept evidence which supports that conclusion, and reject any evidence, no matter how valid, which goes against the conclusion?

[President Biden 5,898]

This is assuming AOC’s win in solid blue NYC is equally as challenging as Conor Lamb’s win in Pittsburgh (fun fact, it isn’t! AOC’s district is like 75% Democrats).

 

Nice cherrypicking tho

[Chromatica 7,042]

2 minutes ago, President Biden said:

This is assuming AOC’s win in solid blue NYC is equally as challenging as Conor Lamb’s win in Pittsburgh (fun fact, it isn’t! AOC’s district is like 75% Democrats).

 

Nice cherrypicking tho

This. AOC could never win in a lot of the districts that more moderate Democrats lost this year, and perhaps even some that moderate Democrats won.

[caulixtla 2,170]

Here’s some more discussion in Twitter.

 

Personally, it’s too soon to figure out how we’ll hold on to the house in 2022. Right now, the important thing is to get the senate by bringing out the blue vote in GA.

Once the GA senate run-off race is done, and once we have final figures for how people voted, then we can look at and run data analysis and try to figure out whether it makes sense to veer far left to stick or move to the center to get the vote out and hold on to the house. 2010 happened because we didn’t have turnout.

[MJHolland 12,725]

I AM OPEN TO THIS IDEA, BUT....

I'll just state the obvious as any political researcher would.. correlation does not equal causation. 

This is an analysis of competitive districts, and given such, you would expect some incumbents to lose some of the time. 

I don't think this necessarily negates the Media Voter Theorem. It's very possible that Democratic candidates move to the right when their districts become more conservative, but it's also true that as their districts become more conservative they are more likely to lose anyways. 

The study says nothing to negate that. 

1 hour ago, OG Gaga Stan said:

I don't know how you can dispute data like that, but I'm sure centrists will try anyway. 

Running on popular, progressive policies should be a no-brainer, the fact that we have to fight to get people to recognize that is insane. 

I mean, the data is what is it. It's the conclusions drawn that are up for debate.

The analysis doesn't prove nonspuriousness. Maybe I'm reading this wrong... but there are only 4 blue dots on the graph? If that's the full sample size I would say this is far from a robust analysis 

I'm open to this idea, I would just like to see more studies done. 

1 hour ago, Gagaloo911 said:

AOC, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman, and the rest of the Squad, all of whom just won their races and are going to Congress as far left progressives, say hi. 

They're all also in very liberal districts where conservative challengers stand no chance? 

 

1 hour ago, Chromatican said:

This is clear as day. John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden are proof that running middle of the road Democrats is a losing strategy, and will only have more and more devastating effects in the near future. It’s time for a progressive. Hopefully 2024 we wisen up and run a progressive or I fear another neofascist could win the White House.

How is Biden proof of a losing strategy? Last I checked he won, got the most votes for president in history, and had the widest national margin in 20 years save 1. 

[Gagaloo911 12,959]

19 minutes ago, caulixtla said:

That’s interesting. How do their figures compensate for the fact that democrats who veer to the center are in more red districts? Has this study been peer reviewed? Considering that the study was commissioned by “Justice Democrats and the Sunrise Movement” and hasn’t been published in a peer reviewed journal (or even analyzed by Nate Silver/Nate Cohn/The Cook Political Report), and the source for the study is a tweet and self-published article, I will remain skeptical until it’s more thoroughly vetted.

Until I can look at the study and see how they correct for how red or blue the district candidates are in, the only conclusion I can safely say is that the study is showing that voters are becoming more polarized. Considering we don’t even have final voting tallies (e.g. the thread I started on AZ’s results, which are as I type this far from final), any conclusion based on November 2020 results is unreliable.

 

 

17 minutes ago, Chromatica said:

This. AOC could never win in a lot of the districts that more moderate Democrats lost this year, and perhaps even some that moderate Democrats won.

Literally go look for yourselves at the Democratic Congressional races, you can see that centrist Democrats largely fared very poorly and lost or barely squeaked by a win in most cases, meanwhile progressives all won their races by substantial margins. Progressive policies succeeded across the country and Americans overwhelmingly support them. 

Maybe if there were candidates who actually fought for these popular policies in more swing districts instead of running away from them like the Democrats did in Florida from the $15 minimum wage who believed it would hurt Biden (he lost anyway), then we could see whether progressives fare equally well in such places.

In fact, Beto O'Rourke's 2018 Senate bid where he essentially ran as a progressive would suggest yes given he almost did it, meanwhile this year didn't even come close with a centrist

Also, Obama ran as a progressive in 2008 and arguably 2012 too and he won decisively.

These data points certainly indicate your arguments to not be the case.

[Gagaloo911 12,959]

3 minutes ago, MJHolland said:

I AM OPEN TO THIS IDEA, BUT....

I'll just state the obvious as any political researcher would.. correlation does not equal causation. 

This is an analysis of competitive districts, and given such, you would expect some incumbents to lose some of the time. 

I don't think this necessarily negates the Media Voter Theorem. It's very possible that Democratic candidates move to the right when their districts become more conservative, but it's also true that as their districts become more conservative they are more likely to lose anyways. 

The study says nothing to negate that. 

I mean, the data is what is it. It's the conclusions drawn that are up for debate.

The analysis doesn't prove nonspuriousness. Maybe I'm reading this wrong... but there are only 4 blue dots on the graph? If that's the full sample size I would say this is far from a robust analysis 

I'm open to this idea, I would just like to see more studies done. 

They're all also in very liberal districts where conservative challengers stand no chance? 

See my previous post above where I address this.