Data Shows Democratic Voters Aren’t That Woke
Bubba
03 Dec
A new study shows Americans think Democratic voters are more ideologically progressive than they really are. (The Atlantic)
A large post-election survey by the nonpartisan research firm More in Common: The top issue for both Democrats (40%) and Republicans (47%) was the "cost of living/inflation."
Democrats' other top priorities: Health care (29%), abortion (29%) and the economy (24%).
Republicans' next biggest priorities: Immigration (47%) and the economy (41%).
The misperceptions: Americans overestimated Democrats' focus on progressive issues, like abortion, while underestimating their focus on inflation and the economy.
For instance, 56% of Republicans believed LGBT/transgender policy was a top-three Democratic priority, though it ranked 14th in reality.
Respondents overestimated Dems’ prioritization of abortion by 20 percentage points.
Most respondents correctly identified inflation and the economy as top Republican concerns.
The explanation: According to More in Common researchers, public discourse is dominated by two groups who tend to be more ideologically extreme than your average American — “Progressive Activists” on the left and “Devoted Conservatives” on the right.
Progressive Activists are half as likely to prioritize the economy and twice as likely to prioritize climate change compared to average Democrats.
Devoted Conservatives align more closely with mainstream Republicans, with immigration as their main difference (Devoted Conservatives are slightly more likely to rank it as their top issue).
Researchers on how Devoted Conservatives and Progressive Activists affect perceptions:
Because these groups’ voices are heard more frequently in the national discourse, their views tend to be confused for those of their party overall. (Think, for example, of the profusion of social-media posts, op-eds, and news coverage about the idea of defunding or abolishing the police in the summer of 2020—a view that was never widely embraced even by the populations most affected by police violence.) This leads people to think that each party holds more extreme views than it really does.
Related: According to a recent analysis by Financial Times data reporter John Burn-Murdoch, Democratic Party elites tend to be more out of touch with the average voter than GOP elites.
