BS Summary: This article contains 23 faulty reasoning types, including Biased Writer Voice, Negativity Bias, and Anecdotal, with Hasty Generalization as the most egregious example at 14.6% saturation with 188 hits. Analysis detected 1,178 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,290 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 28.2% and a BS Rank of 18% (21,181 of 25,563 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 82.90% of the article peer group.
Back in Spring 2019, conventional wisdom held that the Democratic electorate was pining for ideological purity, and the party’s moderate era was over.
A few months earlier, a socialist bartender from Queens named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shocked the political world by defeating a longtime Democratic House incumbent who was in line to succeed Nancy Pelosi as Speaker.
Senator Bernie Sanders had announced his second presidential bid and quickly gained momentum in the polls.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, despite his own initial strong polling, was widely viewed as an out-of-step dinosaur peddling bipartisanship to an uninterested market of primary voters.
Most everyone else running for president sought to compete with Sanders for progressive votes and treat Biden as a moderate foil.
But in a column for Politico , I looked at underlying poll data and determined that the conventional wisdom was wrong.
A majority of Democrats identified as “moderate” or even “conservative.”
Two-thirds preferred politicians who “make compromises with people they disagree with” over those who “stick to their positions.”
One year later, my thesis held up.
Even though Sanders won the popular vote in the first three primary contests with more left-leaning electorates, Biden’s success proved the moderate lane was still viable by winning most of the remaining states.
Today, more than 20 potential Democratic presidential candidates are trying to determine the mindset of the primary electorate.
Once again, primary victories by democratic socialists or like-minded populists seem to signal a leftward lurch.
But does the underlying data agree?
The answer for now: Maybe.
We have some data to indicate the shift among Democrats to an uncompromising leftism is real.
According to annual Gallup polling sampled from 1994 to 2025 , the share of Democrats who identify as “liberal”—as opposed to “moderate” or “conservative”—sits at a record high of 59 percent, up from 25 percent during Bill Clinton’s first term.
Pew Research Center has occasionally asked Democrats if they would prefer candidates who seek “common ground with Republicans on policies, even if it means giving up some things Democrats want,” or candidates who will focus on “pushing hard for policies Democrats want, even if it makes it much harder to get some things done.”
In two polls taken during the 2020 primary cycle, 63 percent of Democrats chose “common ground with Republicans.”
But in a poll released this month, that number sank to 48 percent, with 52 percent going for the more inflexibly partisan candidate.
Most notable is the huge generational gap .
For Democrats under 35 years of age, a whopping 70 percent want push-hard candidates.
But there’s no majority for that among Democrats 50 and over.
However, we have some conflicting data points.
A CNN poll published yesterday asked Democratic respondents about their preferred ways to change the Democratic party and found ideological confusion.
Equivalent majorities of 54 percent said Democrats should move “to the left” and “to the center on policy issues,” with voters under 45 years of age skewing left and voters 45-and-up tacking center.
Since 2010 Gallup has asked respondents to rate themselves on a scale of one to five, “where 1 means it is more important for political leaders to compromise to get things done, and 5 means it is more important for political leaders to stick to their beliefs even if little gets done.”
In every poll, most Democrats put themselves on the compromising side of that spectrum.
And while in the middle of Donald Trump’s first term that majority was a slim 53 percent, that number ticked up in 2025 to 58 percent.
In contrast, none of these polls had more than 50 percent of Republicans embracing compromise, and the share in 2025 was a near-low of 38 percent.
The history of poll questions testing voter interest in pragmatic versus principled politicians shows that over the last 15 years Democratic voters have sided with pragmatists fairly consistently, in stark contrast with Republicans.
Between 2011 and 2019, at least seven polls were taken— mostly by Pew —testing which voters liked most, “ elected officials who make compromises with people they disagree with ” or “ elected officials who stick to their positions.
” In five of the seven, at least 59 percent of Democrats picked the compromisers.
In six of the seven, most Republicans stuck with the stickers.
That context is reason to pause before extrapolating too much from the most recent Pew finding that a Democratic majority prefers politicians who eschew compromise.
We’ve seen Democratic support for compromises temporarily dip before.
For example, a Pew poll in 2018—the last midterm election during a Trump presidency—found only 46 percent of Democratic voters preferred politicians who make compromises.
But that number rebounded strongly in 2019 and 2020 polling.
What might have brought Democrats back to the pragmatic fold?
Perhaps the outcome of the 2018 midterms.
In that Blue Wave year when Democrats took control of the House and flipped seven governor’s mansions, progressives suffered some high-profile flameouts, including Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum’s narrow loss to Ron DeSantis in the Florida gubernatorial election, and ironworker Randy “IronStache” Bryce’s bellyflop in Wisconsin’s First Congressional District.
The big winners of 2018 were mostly in the moderate mold, like Elissa Slotkin and Haley Stevens, who flipped Republican-held House seats in Michigan, and Gretchen Whitmer and Tony Evers, who took governorships in Michigan and Wisconsin, respectively.
Slotkin is now a Senator, and Stevens is trying to join her.
Whitmer and Evers are retiring after two successful terms in office, with Whitmer term-limited.
Will 2026 look like 2018?
That’s a big if, and what happens in Michigan’s Senate race and Wisconsin’s gubernatorial race may play a huge role.
Democratic primary voters can sometimes can think like political consultants and seek someone they disagree with at times but believe is more “electable.”
But many younger, ideological voters are eager to prove they are smarter than the stereotypical political consultants.
Will socialist-backed candidates Abdul El-Sayed and Francesca Hong win their U.S.
Senate primaries next month, and if so, will they prevail in November?
If they do, that will upend the Democrats’ perennial ideology-versus-electability debate and strengthen the case for a progressive populist or democratic socialist in the presidential primary.
How Troy Jackson, the Berniecrat running for U.S.
Senate in Maine, fares against the quietly ruthless Republican incumbent Susan Collins will also be relevant.
But if these candidates come up short, while candidates who have leaned to the center do better, then moderates will have an easier time convincing the Democratic rank-and-file they shouldn’t roll the dice on an ideologue.
(Keep an eye on Senate candidates such as North Carolina’s Roy Cooper, Iowa’s Josh Turek, Texas’ James Talarico, and Alaska’s Mary Peltola.)
It’s also possible we will see a mix of results that don’t fit either camp’s narrative.
We know that the Democratic primary electorate is far more comfortable with the “liberal” label today than at any time in the last 30 years.
But we don’t know yet if they are more comfortable with a standard-bearer who will emphasize ambitious progressivism over incremental progress.
We are seeing a big generation gap on this score in polls, but the generational mix of the 2028 presidential primary cannot yet be known.
One reason Sanders was unable to eclipse Biden in 2020 is that the youth share of the electorate declined from four years prior, when Sanders needed it to grow.
Whether the youth vote will be turbocharged in 2028, and whether they can convince more older voters to shed their hesitations, will likely depend on how well left-wing candidates perform in less than 100 days.
The post How Left Will Democrats Go In 2028?
That Depends on 2026 appeared first on Washington Monthly .
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