Nate Silver's Blog, page 62

What Endorsements Matter Most In The Democratic Primary?

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarahf (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): Here at FiveThirtyEight, we’re interested in tracking presidential endorsements as they’re often a good indicator of which candidates the party is rallying behind.

So today let’s talk about the Democratic Party’s Kingmakers — or those endorsers that can make or break a candidate. First of all, who are they? And then second, what does a winning strategy in the endorsement primary look like? Should candidates prioritize endorsements from early-voting primary states? Does the type of office an endorser holds/held matter? Or is it all about the constituencies an endorser can bring to the table?

clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): What’s interesting to me is how few people have endorsed! I guess it’s still very early, but the clearest example I can point to of the endorsement primary already being underway is when all the candidates (or so it seemed) headed to Jim Clyburn’s South Carolina fish fry in June.

He, of course, is a big deal in the national party as well as in an early primary state.

And I think the fight over Clyburn is demonstrative of the battle over important black endorsers. In fact, between Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Joe Biden, I’d say there is already a pretty big push to win endorsements from members of the Congressional Black Caucus.

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): Yeah, a Clyburn endorsement would definitely be in my top five or 10. But the thing about this year is that since Everybody’s Running, the endorsements you probably want the most are actually from the other candidates. In particular, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Biden, who all command large, loyal constituencies.

clare.malone: Very true, though the big candidate endorsements likely won’t happen until next summer, right?

Or next spring, if things shake out neatly.

galen (Galen Druke, podcast producer and reporter): At this point, it seems like a lot of these candidates are going to have enough money to keep them going well into the primary season, so I’m not holding my breath on those endorsements happening anytime soon.

clare.malone: Maybe, though some candidates might see the writing on the wall and they’ll want to have their endorsement actually matter.

Speaking of a BIG endorsement — and a new one at that — who Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez decides to back is going to be big. My guess is it will come down to Warren or Sanders, but she’s said that she wants to wait to endorse, so I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out to see what she does.

galen: An endorsement from AOC would definitely confer progressive bona fides on a candidate, so it’ll be important to see who she endorses. And as we talk about endorsers, it’s important that we keep in mind what they represent: a demographic group, an ideological wing of the party, a certain state, or say, a figurehead like Obama.

natesilver: I mean, Obama is THE kingmaker.

But I don’t know if he’s going to endorse.

If does though, he’s like 10x more important than any other endorsement.

sarahf: But will Obama endorse?!

galen: NO

Unless it is Biden vs. Marianne Williamson at the end.

natesilver: I could see some circumstances where he would.

Especially if, like, a candidate he liked was ahead, but it seemed like Democrats were headed toward a contested convention, and he wanted to avoid that.

clare.malone: Yeah, Obama could endorse by early summer next year if things are still looking very crowded.

There will certainly come a point in the primary season where people start writing think pieces along the lines of “Have Democrats learned any lessons from the GOP’s disastrous 2016 primary??”

People will CLICK on those.

sarahf: But to the point Nate made earlier about people dropping out of the race and how their endorsements could be some of the most important endorsements this cycle … I have a question: How come their endorsements don’t get extra points in our tracker?

I, for one, would think they’d have a higher point value based on what we’ve discussed so far.

But I digress!

galen: Agree. I don’t understand why we give former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton the same number of points as Obama in the tracker.

So … explain that.

natesilver: I don’t think we should be thinking about this stuff in terms of the tracker.

The tracker tracks everyone, and we’re asking here if there are endorsements that carry SYMBOLIC and SUBSTANTIVE importance beyond that.

The value of endorsements isn’t in like “ohhh, Random Senator X endorsed Candidate Y,” it’s more that it’s a proxy for the “party deciding.” But some endorsements, e.g. Obama’s, really might persuade voters to think differently about the race.

sarahf: OK, so who are some other Democrats that might fall into this category, the “big names,” if you will?

We’ve got Obama, AOC and Clyburn.

galen: Apart from Barack, there is Michelle. Do you think the Obamas endorse together?

clare.malone: I think I disagree with Galen’s point about the weight of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton’s endorsements.

Clinton’s endorsement might be toxic in today’s party, but Carter is still seen as a moral leader.

galen: I agree with that, but I still don’t think his endorsement is as powerful as Obama’s.

clare.malone: No.

natesilver: HiLlArY ClInToN

sarahf: Oooh, I know Clare was talking about Bill Clinton’s endorsement being toxic, but I’m not so sure Hillary Clinton’s endorsement would be much better.

natesilver: Oh, you guys are totally wrong, the Clinton endorsements would still be a big deal.

clare.malone: Well, Hillary’s endorsement would certainly carry more weight than Bill’s at this juncture. Even if Bill still resonates with some communities, his sins (that were kinda forgiven in the past) are viewed very differently today by party elites.

galen: I honestly couldn’t tell you how this would play out, but I think candidates will play it safe and just try to keep the Clintons out of the conversation.

It is worth remembering that as of the 2018 midterms, Hillary Clinton’s approval rating among the broader public was still in the mid-30s.

natesilver: But Clinton won the primary by a WIDE margin four years ago! And a lot of Democrats like her! They didn’t want her to run again, but they still like her!

clare.malone: I don’t think she’ll endorse until there’s a named nominee.

Though, who knows–she might want to make waves! She does seem to occasionally throw bombs.

galen: Who of the top four would actively seek her endorsement?

natesilver: I think Harris and Warren, in particular, would seek her endorsement.

clare.malone: Harris for sure.

Warren I’m less sure about, though you could be right, Nate.

sarahf: OK, last call for the heavyweights. Who else?

natesilver: NaNcY PeLoSi

galen: Proxies for heavy hitters also matter — Valerie Jarrett, Eric Holder, for example.

natesilver: Ohhhh I totally disagree on the proxies.

clare.malone: I like the idea of proxies…

Why, Nate?

natesilver: Because who the hell cares who, say, Valerie Jarrett endorses. Nobody knows who she is.

galen: But party people know who she is and they might take it as a sign of what “Obama world” is thinking.

And that matters.

natesilver: ZZZZZ

clare.malone: Oh, I have one.

Pod Save America.

If they endorsed, they would be decently influential as a group.

galen: Hooo boy

clare.malone: I’m serious.

They’re a big platform for a core slice of the party.

natesilver: WHAT ABOUT CHAPO

sarahf: Hold on, I think Galen has a point about proxies, especially if many of these heavyweight endorsers won’t endorse until later. Sure, many people might not know who Valerie Jarrett is (she’s one of Obama’s longest-serving advisors), but say she and others from “Obama world” come out in support of one candidate. That matters, no?

Or at least political journalists (aka us) will write about it.

clare.malone: It would drive mini news cycles (maybe…)

natesilver: It matters in the “party decides” sense but not in the “kingmaker” sense. And we’re debating king- and queenmakers today.

sarahf:

clare.malone: WHO IS MICHAEL DUKAKIS ENDORSING??????

sarahf: Warren. So that’s one heavyweight(?) down …

galen: Speaking of past presidential nominees … didn’t Walter Mondale endorse Amy Klobuchar?

natesilver: Mondale is for the Klob, yeah.

clare.malone: “The Klob” is the worst nickname ever.

Congrats.

sarahf: OK, let’s move away from who the heavyweights are (or aren’t) and back to the different endorsement strategies candidates should be using.

If a lot of these heavyweights are off the table, what lower-level king- and queenmakers should candidates be trying to win over now? Does it make sense to concentrate on just one state? Or maybe a state-specific strategy doesn’t matter?

galen: STATE KINGMAKERS

clare.malone: In Iowa, at least, you want people with a history of activism who drive people to the caucuses–so state lawmakers really matter there.

That’s why people always talk about the importance of courting activist types in those early states–it’s very retail politics driven.

galen: The upper Midwest just elected some new Democratic governors in 2018, who could make the argument that they know how to win those states as Democrats, and that they have a good sense for who should be the nominee.

I’m thinking Gretchen Whitmer (Michigan) or Tony Evers (Wisconsin).

natesilver: Yeah, Michigan seems like it’s a state that could be up for grabs.

galen: What if the Democratic governors of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania all endorsed together??

That could be kinda interesting

clare.malone: I don’t think it would happen, but sure! Interesting!

sarahf: What is a smart on-the-ground endorsement strategy at this point to win over these state kingmakers?

natesilver: Is there any strategy apart from kissing people’s asses a lot?

clare.malone: In the early states, a lot of national candidates go to local elected officials’ events, which makes the officials seem more high profile, in return for getting their on-the-ground/word-of-mouth push to voters.

So, yeah, ass kissing.

natesilver: Look, even Al Sharpton is getting a fair among of ass-kissing. That’s what this process involves.

clare.malone: What do you mean “even” Al Sharpton, Nate?

He’s a big name in Democratic politics.

natesilver: I mean that he’s pretty unpopular outside of narrow circles. Even in NYC, his favorability ratings are quite meh.

sarahf: So does this mean that candidates looking to have a strong performance in the early-voting states should concentrate their on-the-ground efforts there? Because I have to say, for all the talk of Iowa and New Hampshire as the first caucus and primary in the nation, it’s not exactly clear to me who the kingmakers are?

galen: Well, we know Clyburn is the kingmaker in South Carolina.

Perhaps Harry Reid is a kingmaker in Nevada?

And maybe there just fewer high-profile Democrats in Iowa and New Hampshire at this point?

clare.malone: Unions are big in the Nevada caucuses, too.

In 2016, Clinton heavily courted Latino members of unions, for instance.

So maybe in Nevada things are more organized around unions.

natesilver: Nevada is also sort of a machine state, so I think Reid is one of those endorsements that could matter a lot in a very direct sense.

Nevada is a pretty hard one to figure out otherwise.

clare.malone: I think in Iowa, at least, there are clearer kingmakers in the GOP primary — for instance, Steve King and conservative family organizations have tended to be very influential.

sarahf: And there doesn’t seem to be the same Democratic equivalent, right?

But maybe that’s because the endorsement primary in these early states works differently and involves a much broader array of endorsers, including state legislators, labor unions, interest groups and even celebrities.

And so, say, the union vote matters more than anyone prominent individual.

Or at least this is the “party decides” view.

galen: Can we talk about endorsements from #NeverTrump Republicans? Does anyone think that these endorsements could matter?

natesilver: WHO WILL BRET STEPHENS ENDORSE?!?!?!?!

WOULD YOU RATHER HAVE OBAMA’S ENDORSEMENT OR BRET STEPHENS’S?

clare.malone: Bret Stephens will endorse Bill Weld or something.

OR…MARK SANFORD!!!

I’m so excited about Mark Sanford running (potentially).

Never forget the Appalachian Trail.

natesilver: I tend to think the media will overrate the importance of those cross-partisan endorsements. But I also think they COULD matter. In many states, the primaries are open to independents and Republicans, or there isn’t party registration at all.

sarahf: I don’t think we’re going to see anyone making explicit appeals to Never Trumpers in the primary, though.

clare.malone: Yeah, I don’t think Biden would seek out John Kasich’s endorsements in the primary, but it definitely wouldn’t hurt in the general.

natesilver: If Biden were to win the primary, I think it’s probably going to be a big part of his message.

sarahf: So it seems as if when it comes to the endorsement primary, there are two parts of it: 1) You want to build a broad coalition of support in the early states amid core constituencies whether that’s activists, unions or the like. 2) But you also want that extra boost from king- and queenmakers, except they often wait until very late in the process to make their endorsement … so how do you set yourself up for success there?

galen: Promise cabinet positions and ambassadorships.

I’m joking.

clare.malone: …. but are you?

galen: Yeah, I might not be joking.

Because what else can you do? You can make them feel special by wining and dining them and offer them something for their endorsement, or you can start winning so that people feel like they are on the winning team when they endorse you.

The first is easier to do. Winning is harder.

natesilver: I think it’s maybe more idiosyncratic and random than that. These are famous people with big egos. You build relationships, network, ass-kiss and yeah, maybe you can promise a few people a cabinet job or ambassadorship or even (!!!!!!!) the vice presidency (!!!!!!!!!). But there’s not THAT much you can do beyond that.

To the extent you’re spending more time in X state, it’s for all sorts of reasons — mostly that you think you can win that state — and not to gain more endorsements there.

clare.malone: And you as the candidate don’t need to make promises of jobs–people will assume they have your ear/a shot at influence, etc.

People like to think that their support for you will matter if you win.

natesilver: And they also like to endorse winners.

Sometimes the endorsements that matter the most are the unexpected ones. Like, if Beto O’Rourke were to get a big, unexpected endorsement, that might help him quite a bit right now because he’s sort of sucking wind otherwise.

Or if Bernie were to get Hillary Clinton’s endorsement, that would shake things up!

galen: Is anyone willing to argue that endorsements don’t matter anymore in Trump’s America?

natesilver: IN TRUMP’S AMERICA ONLY WHITE WORKING CLASS VOTERS AT TRUCK STOPS IN YOUNGSTOWN, OHIO MATTER. WHO ARE THEY ENDORSING?

clare.malone: No, because here’s the thing: People like it when other people help them navigate the political process.

And I don’t mean this condescendingly–there is A LOT going on in this election and people have A LOT going on in their lives. So they form bonds of trust in people/institutions and use those to guide their decisions. It’s the same way a lot of us make big decisions.

In politics as in life, endorsements matter.

natesilver: Yeah, I really … endorse that comment from Clare.

Voters aren’t able to pay as much attention to the race as we reporter-editor-journo-analysts might because they Actually Have Lives. So having a trusted person or institution endorse a candidate matters a lot.

galen: I also agree with Clare. The lesson from 2016 was not that the party can’t decide, but that the party wasn’t coordinated enough to decide, at least on the GOP side.

natesilver: We wrote about this a lot when we launched our endorsement tracker.

There’s plenty of reason to think endorsements still matter.

Also, EVERYTHING IS DIFFERENT BECAUSE TRUMP is generally bad analysis, sorry, Galen.

galen: THAT WASN’T MY TAKE

natesilver: I JUST WANTED TO GET SOMEONE ELSE TO TALK IN ALL CAPS

clare.malone: I LOVE IT WHEN WE FIGHT

natesilver: IT WAS LONELY HERE

Politics Podcast: Racial Resentment As A Political Strategy

By Perry Bacon Jr., Sarah Frostenson, Nate Silver and Galen Druke, Perry Bacon Jr., Sarah Frostenson, Nate Silver and Galen Druke, Perry Bacon Jr., Sarah Frostenson, Nate Silver and Galen Druke and Perry Bacon Jr., Sarah Frostenson, Nate Silver and Galen Druke












 












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At a rally in North Carolina last week, while President Trump criticized Rep. Ilhan Omar, the crowd broke into chants of “send her back.” That came after Trump tweeted earlier in the week that Omar and other Democratic lawmakers of color should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the team discusses whether Trump’s rhetoric is part of a deliberate electoral strategy aimed at stoking racial division — and, if so, whether Americans will be receptive.

The crew also assesses the recently announced lineups for the second Democratic primary debate, diving into who won and who lost in CNN’s televised draw as well as what to look out for during the two-night event next week in Detroit. Also, the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast is recording a live podcast in Detroit on Aug. 1. For more information and to get tickets, go here.

You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button in the audio player above or by downloading it in iTunes , the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen .

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast publishes Monday evenings, with additional episodes throughout the week. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes . Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.

Politics Podcast: Who’s Going To Win Pennsylvania In 2020?

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Pennsylvania arguably tied Wisconsin as the tipping point state in 2016, according to FiveThirtyEight’s tipping-point calculation. And in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, both parties are already taking the Keystone State seriously. President Trump held a rally there earlier this year, and former Vice President Joe Biden has headquartered his campaign in Philadelphia.

In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the crew heads to Philadelphia to explore how politics in the state have evolved since 2016 and what the math looks like for both parties in 2020.

FiveThirtyEight On The Road is brought to you by WeWork. You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button in the audio player above or by downloading it in iTunes , the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen .

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast publishes Monday evenings, with additional episodes throughout the week. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes . Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.

Bulletpoint: Beto O’Rourke Doesn’t Have A Base

As my editors will tell you, I have a bad habit of leaving stories half-finished. Sometimes it’s because I get bored or busy, but sometimes it’s because the subject gets less and less newsworthy as I’m in the process of finishing a story.

That’s the case with a story I’ve been working on about Beto O’Rourke, who has become less relevant to the Democratic primary now that he’s polling at only about 3 percent. But the story may help to explain why O’Rourke has struggled so much, so I’m going to resurrect it in brief, bulletpoint form.

Here’s the gist of the argument: O’Rourke is probably competing for young voters more than for older ones, for white voters more than nonwhite ones, and for moderate voters more than for very liberal ones. (His voting record in Congress was fairly moderate, although the policy positions he’s staking out now are more of a mixed bag.) There are plenty of young voters, white voters and moderate voters in the Democratic electorate. But there aren’t that many who are young and white and moderate.

According to the Cooperative Congressional Election Study,1 63 percent of voters in the 2016 Democratic primaries were white, 51 percent identified themselves as moderate or conservative, and 56 percent were born in 1965 or afterward, per the Pew Research Center. Multiply those numbers together, and you’d expect:

63% * 51% * 56% = ~18%

…about 18 percent of Democrats to be all three things at once. That’s enough to form a real base when you’re competing for a party nomination, especially when Democratic rules require you to win at least 15 percent of voters in a state or congressional district to secure convention delegates.

But when you actually look at individual-level voter data, you find something different: Only 12 percent of Democratic primary voters are young and white and moderate. That’s far fewer voters to go around, especially when you’re also competing with, say, Pete Buttigieg for the same voters.

What gives? Well, these various characteristics are correlated with one another, so you can’t just multiply the different numbers together to come up with the right number of voters, which would imply that they were independent from one another. And they’re correlated in ways that are not helpful for Beto (or Buttigieg). Younger Democrats tend to be more liberal than older ones. And white voters — not all whites, but the ones who vote in Democratic primaries — are more liberal than minorities. There are some young, white, moderate Democrats, but not as many as you’d expect.

There aren’t many young, white, moderate Democrats

Share of 2016 Democratic primary and caucus voters, grouped by age, race and ideology

Share of Democratic primary electorate


Group
If age, race and IDEOLOGY were uncorrelated
Actual




Young, white, liberal
16.9%
19.2%


Old, white, moderate
14.3
16.8


Old, white, liberal
13.6
14.2


Young, nonwhite, moderate
10.6
13.8


Young, white, moderate
17.8
12.4


Young, nonwhite, liberal
10.1
10.1


Old, nonwhite, moderate
8.5
8.4


Old, nonwhite, liberal
8.1
5.1

Source: Cooperative Congressional Election StUDY

Conversely, there are more young, white, liberal voters (i.e. the Bernie Sanders base) than you’d expect in the electorate than if these characteristics were uncorrelated, and also more old, white, moderate voters than you’d expect (i.e. Joe Biden base). These are the “hot spots” in the electorate, so to speak. After that, the next-largest groups in the electorate are old, white liberals (probably a good group for Elizabeth Warren) and young, relatively moderate nonwhite voters (which could be a good one for Kamala Harris, especially if she tacks more to the center).

That doesn’t explain or excuse all of O’Rourke’s problems. But he has less of a natural base of voters than many of the leading candidates do, which doesn’t only hurt his standing in the polls but also means there are fewer people willing to stand up to defend him when things are going poorly, as they have been recently.

Bulletpoint: Bernie Sanders Is Running Ahead Of The Pack On Health Care

As we talked about on this week’s podcast, Bernie Sanders is having trouble differentiating himself from Elizabeth Warren and other candidates competing for liberal voters. And some of the arguments that Sanders has been making — like that he’s more electable than Warren, even when voters don’t necessarily perceive that to be the case — have been dubious. But one number jumped out at me in the new CNN/UNH poll of New Hampshire Democratic primary voters that’s really good for Sanders: 34 percent think that Sanders is best able to handle health care.

By contrast, only 19 percent of voters in the poll put Sanders as their first choice (tied with Warren for second and behind Joe Biden’s 24 percent), so he’s still getting some credit from voters even if they don’t necessarily have him as their first choice.

And frankly, he probably should be getting credit. I don’t mean that as any sort of endorsement of his plan. It’s just that he has a plan — Medicare for All — when several of the other Democrats don’t. Instead, a number of other Democratic candidates — Warren, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand — have signed up as co-sponsors of Sanders’s bill.

This is particularly strange for Warren, whose semi-official slogan is that “she has a plan for that.” As the Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein points out, there are plenty of plausible versions of plans that fall under the rubric of single payer or Medicare for All, some of which would allow Americans to keep some forms of private insurance (without which, Medicare for All becomes much less popular). Harris, meanwhile, despite having co-sponsored Sanders’s bill, has had trouble articulating what her health care stance actually is, exactly. In the category of unforced errors, I find it hard to fathom why Warren and Harris are ceding leadership on health care to Sanders, and even to Biden, who released his own plan health care plan this week. And it comes on an issue that matters: Health care ranked as the top issue for Democrats in that CNN/UNH poll.

Bulletpoint: Does Kamala Harris Need A Win Before California?Â

Hey folks, Silver Bulletpoints is back after a short hiatus because of vacation and the debate — and this week, we’re splitting up the format into three short articles rather than three items contained in a single article. We’ve done it once before, and might even do it again. I also might be over the word count this week … but when Micah is on vacation …

Sen. Kamala Harris holds the lead in two new polls of California, her home state, although in both cases by narrow margins. That’s the good news for her. The bad news is that it’s not clear which state she could win before California. Here’s how she has fared in polls of the four early-voting states since the first Democratic debate (June 26 and 27):

 

Iowa: Tied for 3rd, 2nd, 3rd
New Hampshire: 5th, 2nd, 4th
Nevada: No polls since the debate; the last poll before the debate had her 5th
South Carolina: 3rd, 2nd

Yes, it’s early, she’s been on an upward trajectory, and she’s within the margin of error of the leader in some of these polls. Still, one problem with an approach like Harris’s of building a consensus path to victory is that the candidate isn’t necessarily the first choice of any one group of voters. And this can be a problem in states in which the demographics are idiosyncratic, as they are in all four early-voting states.

The electorates in Iowa and New Hampshire, for example, are probably a bit more liberal than Harris would like, helping candidates such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren instead. And while South Carolina’s large black population could help Harris, it still looks like Joe Biden’s state to lose, provided he does well enough among African Americans while cleaning up among relatively conservative white Democrats who are also plentiful in the electorate there. Nevada? Well, I don’t know, Nevada is weird. (I love you, Nevada.) You probably want a candidate who does well among Hispanics, who has a good organization and who has the backing of organized labor. That could be Harris, but unions are mostly taking their time to make any endorsements.

It’s true that finishing first doesn’t actually matter in terms of the Democrats’ delegate math. Unlike in the Republican primary, there are no winner-take-all states; instead, delegates are divided proportionately among candidates who receive at least 15 percent of the vote in a given state or congressional district. And Harris was at 15 percent or higher in several of the early-state polls I mentioned above, even though she didn’t lead in any of them.

Winning can matter, though, in terms of momentum, which mostly takes the form of favorable media coverage. Although the post-Iowa bounce has faded in recent years — just ask Ted Cruz how much good winning Iowa did him in New Hampshire — a candidate who came from behind to win an early state or who is otherwise seen as expectations-defying could still get a pretty big boost. And if voters are still choosing among several candidates — say, Harris and Warren — they might jump on the bandwagon of whoever has performed well in these early states. No candidate since Bill Clinton in 1992 has won a nomination while losing both Iowa and New Hampshire.

All of which is to say: Harris probably needs to start plotting out a media and expectations-management strategy now that allows her to remain viable even if she strikes out in the first four states. California and some of the other Super Tuesday states should be good states for her, by contrast, but she needs to get there and to remain above the 15 percent threshold first.

Will ‘The Squad’ vs. Pelosi Be A Big Problem For Democrats In 2020?

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarahf (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): Last week, congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib captured headlines for breaking with House Democrats and Nancy Pelosi on an emergency border aid bill that lacked protections for migrant children.

This wasn’t the first time the so-called “Squad” broke ranks. Or the first time their public disagreement with House leadership has led to sniping in the press (Pelosi told New York Times op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd that “All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world. But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got.”)

But it’s not just Democratic leadership taking aim. Republicans have tried to paint “the Squad” as part of the “radical left,” and the direction the party is moving in. And on Sunday, President Trump sparked a firestorm — at least among Democrats — when he tweeted that “‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen” should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

So what is it about the Squad that has captured the attention of both Republicans and Democrats? Let’s try to tackle this in two parts: 1) What role do we think the Squad has in pushing the Democratic Party in a new direction? 2) And what, if any, do we think will be the electoral repercussions in 2020?

To get us started, what do we make of the news surrounding the Squad and their split from Pelosi and House Democrats on the emergency border aid bill?

julia_azari (Julia Azari, political science professor at Marquette University and FiveThirtyEight contributor): Well, I can start from providing the view from poli sci Twitter, which tends to be a fairly pro-party group of people (and leans Democratic/anti-Trump). So in response to the Twitter fight between the House Democrats’ account and AOC’s chief of staff, there was a lot of talk like “have these fights behind closed doors, don’t have a big, public blowup.”

But I disagree. Party infighting should not be done in a smoke-filled room. That’s just not what people want from politics anymore, and I think when that does happen, it contributes to further institutional distrust and disengagement.

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): I’d note that AOC has a Trump score of 18 percent, meaning that she’s voted in line with Trump’s position 18 percent of the time. But according to her data, you’d expect her to vote with Trump about… 0 percent of the time based on how liberal her district is.

So she’s actually proving a bit problematic for Pelosi, in the sense that she should be a guaranteed vote, but Pelosi is only getting her ~80 percent of the time. Except none of this has really mattered since Pelosi has room to spare in the House, and a lot of legislation that passes the House has no chance of passing a GOP-led Senate anyway.

sarahf: Is there at least an argument to be made that Pelosi and the Squad should take fewer swipes at each other over their disagreements, as too much of a focus on intraparty fighting can’t be good for the party?

julia_azari: So here’s my galaxy brain take.

natesilver:

julia_azari: It’s good for the Squad for Pelosi, at least, to take swipes at them. After all, part of the anti-establishment brand is to be in tension with, well, the establishment. And it’s possible that leaders like Pelosi know this! What I’m not really sure about is how good the Squad (so much shorter than typing all their names) is for the Democratic Party.

I don’t think they’re a problem, but it’s too early to gauge their party-building potential. And obviously, they make some people nervous. But if the goal is to engage young people, women and people of color, and keep the left flank of the party somewhat happy, they seem like a good bet.

I am really long-winded today. #sorrynotsorry

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): It would be smart for the party establishment to think of this as natural tension between the wings of the party.

The problem is I don’t think they actually do, which is one of the reasons why this is all so interesting. (The House leadership’s official Twitter account attacked AOC’s chief of staff over the weekend, with the implication that she should fire him.)

sarahf: To Julia’s point about the Squad’s party-building potential, isn’t there an argument to be made that they don’t even need to have that? Their ethos is that they’re here to do away with the old system. They agitate for change; they don’t need to bridge consensus within the party, unlike say, Pelosi, who has a very different role to play.

And the fact that virtually all of the 2020 Democratic candidates have a position on the Green New Deal is a testament to their effectiveness at pushing the party in new directions, no?

julia_azari: Right. Which maybe Pelosi likes and maybe she doesn’t. Obviously, moving to the left carries risks. But (and this is where I got into it with a bunch of people on Twitter on Sunday), it’s not clear to me that Democratic leaders actually want to go back to the 1990s and early 2000s.

Yes, the party was more “professionalized,” and less split internally, than it is now. It also won two plurality elections and lost to George W. Bush. Not to mention, voter turnout was low.

So one lesson you might learn from the 2008 period onward is that the party does well with fresh faces, even if it also has to win suburban swing districts that might not view AOC and Rashida Tlaib all that favorably.

perry: But the Democratic establishment (I don’t know about Pelosi, personally) seems to think that the prominence of these four women is not a natural, healthy tension, and instead is broadly bad for the party.

And I think their preferred outcome is that the AOC wing basically stays quiet until December 2020 (after the presidential election). That’s where the real tension is.

julia_azari: We’ve (and here, I specifically mean academics and the media) way overemphasized the concept of party unity.

sarahf: I guess I just don’t understand why the Democratic establishment is making this into such a big deal. But I agree with Perry that they definitely would prefer the AOC wing of the party stay quiet, especially when polls like this are leaked. (Axios wouldn’t disclose the group that conducted the poll, so there’s a lot we don’t know about it, and its findings should be treated with skepticism. But it reportedly found that many likely general election voters who are white and have two years or less of college education had a negative opinion of AOC and socialism.)

julia_azari: For the record, that Axios piece is extremely misleading.

sarahf:

It’s just hard for me to believe that these four women really would have that much of an impact on 2020?

natesilver: I kinda come back to Occam’s razor on this. When you have a bunch of new members who want to push the party in a more ideological direction, it usually entails electoral risk. But the benefit, potentially, is that you also shift the party’s platform in that direction.

perry: Yes, but so many party establishment people want to take away any unnecessary election risks–and I think they would argue AOC talking about getting rid of the Department of Homeland Security, for example, is an unnecessary election risk.

natesilver: It’s also probably a very marginal electoral risk in a world where Donald Trump is president and there’s much bigger news all the time.

julia_azari: Part of the problem is that the lessons of 2016 aren’t clear. You could say that 2016 showed that there was a real push to move Democrats to the left. Or you could say that 2016 was about how Democrats lost groups of voters to Republicans (e.g. the diploma divide among white voters). And those forces push the party in different directions.

perry: The party establishment is probably overstating the rise of the AOC wing in terms of affecting the 2020 elections. But their risk assessment, I think, is driving these tensions–leading Pelosi to bash the AOC wing fairly often, for example.

natesilver: But it’s not crazy for the party establishment to be worried about it! Sometimes I think everyone in this discussion is not always clear about what they think will be electorally advantageous versus what they do — or don’t — like policywise.

julia_azari: Most of this in relation to the Squad is marginal, though, no matter how many hot headlines Axios posts with polls that don’t actually say anything about AOC being the face of the party or about swing states.

natesilver: Journalistic malpractice on Axios’s part TBH to publish a poll without even listing who conducted the poll.

We don’t even know who leaked it. We don’t even know if the poll was real. We should be that skeptical when basic facts and details about a poll are missing like that.

sarahf: That’s fair. And I know we’ve talked about this before, but I think part of what we’re seeing play out here, especially with AOC, is there is now a group of politicians that aren’t willing to play by the old rules. And they will use their large social media followings to get their message across, and on their terms.

So maybe party leadership is scared of losing control?

And so we see Pelosi snipe about how they’re only four votes.

Maybe the Freedom Caucus and the headaches it has caused for the Republican Party has so scarred Democratic leadership that they’ll do anything to stop this faction of their party from growing.

But is this kind of fear misplaced? How much is the Squad really moving the party to the left?

natesilver: Clare said this yesterday on the podcast, but the Squad are very effective at getting media attention, and the media is quite happy to play up the “Democrats IN DISARRAY!” storylines. So in that sense it does seem like a mistake for Pelosi et al. to hit back at them.

perry: About a third of the 235 House Democrats (CNN has this number at 82) support starting an impeachment inquiry into Trump.

Ninety-five support the Green New Deal; 118 support Medicare for All. So just in terms of raw numbers, the positions of the AOC wing are much broader than four people.

I think the big shift for Pelosi is that she has never had a vocal, powerful group saying that she is too far to the right. For basically the entire time Pelosi has led the House Democrats, her biggest tension has been with the right flank of the party — some conservative Democrats in the House thought that she was too far to the left.

But now, Pelosi is being attacked from the left in a serious way, for the first time. And I actually think she and Biden are responding in similar ways to these attacks from the left.

My sense is they both see themselves as liberal icons–the man who helped elect the first black president, the woman who pushed through a huge health care reform that extended insurance to millions. And I think this criticism from the younger generation of Democrats makes them mad. Pelosi seems indignant at times, so does Biden.

julia_azari: Biden and Pelosi also managed to establish themselves as liberals when cultural/LGBT issues were on the rise in the party, and you didn’t have to do anything particularly radical to be liberal enough on economics and race.

In 2019, it takes more to be a liberal icon.

natesilver: I mean… I don’t know that the Squad always pick their battles all that well, and in that sense they are pretty Freedom Caucus-like. On the other hand, they have a lot more star power than the Freedom Caucus. There is a lot of political talent there.

And they’re all pretty young. So a lot of my critiques of Bernie Sanders’s campaign, for instance, i.e. that he doesn’t have a good plan to expand his base, definitely doesn’t apply to the Squad when they can unify leftist Democrats with nonwhite Democrats.

sarahf: Something I think we’re all touching on here is the fact that it is four women of color pushing the party to the left and challenging the status quo. And that matters. Each of them have made appeals to their background and how they represent people who historically haven’t had a seat at the table.

And this probably, to put it bluntly, does make certain older vanguards of the party uncomfortable, because they consider themselves to be liberal, and that now they’re forced to reckon with the idea that they’re maybe not as liberal as they think.

perry: I want to come back to something Nate said earlier that I think is essential.

“Sometimes I think everyone in this discussion is not always clear about what they think will be electorally advantageous versus what they do — or don’t — like policywise.”

The AOC wing at times says its ideas, like Medicare for All, are both the right thing to do on policy AND will help Democrats electorally, by either increasing turnout among people who might not otherwise vote or appealing to swing voters. Whereas the establishment wing often says a policy is bad on substance and that it will hurt Democrats’ chances in 2020.

To me, both sides are overconfident in saying that their policy views are the best electoral position, too.

natesilver: I get annoyed by this sort of question for a couple of different reasons. On the one hand, I think it’s generally bullshit to think that a policy that polls as being quite unpopular will magically turn out to be electorally helpful because it motivates the base or whatever.

On the other hand, there’s a lot of bullshit in which more establishment/centrist Democrats will deride a policy for being unpopular, when their real motivation against it is that they don’t like the policy.

perry: I know it’s our job to analyze elections. But I think it’s really hard to figure out exactly how policy ideas and outcomes affect election results. So I find claims people make suggesting “Policy X is unpopular so Candidate Y will lose” to be way too overconfident at times. At the same time, we can make some judgements.

For example, “Medicare for everyone who wants it’ (the basic position of Biden, Pete Buttigieg and other more centrist Democrats) is probably a safer political position than “Medicare for everyone and change the whole system” (the stance of AOC and Sanders). I say that even though Medicare for All might be a better health care policy.

natesilver: “Medicare for everyone who wants it” is indeed quite a bit more popular than “Medicare for all,” and one of the reasons “Medicare for all” polls well is because people assume “Medicare for all” means “Medicare for everyone who wants it.”

julia_azari: So my view on the policy thing is complicated. Nate has the Occam’s razor view that I think makes sense, but here’s another galaxy-brain take. I spend most of my time in Wisconsin, a state with a long anti-establishment political tradition, and around a lot of younger people (my students), so my sense of how popular some anti-establishment and left-leaning policies are is probably inflated. But in general, I think most people are NOT sophisticated on policy specifics, but they are sensitive to scary images and wording. There’s even evidence that policies that sound too left-leaning or disruptive are especially vulnerable to scary images and messaging. So while it might seem like a lot of people are not happy with the status quo, that does not mean major, risky policy change isn’t still intimidating.

perry: That’s well put. Medicare for All is very vulnerable to scare tactics.

sarahf: Especially when abolishing private insurance enters the equation.

natesilver: I don’t know. I sort of agree with Vox’s Matt Yglesias that people are learning the wrong lesson from Trump. He was actually perceived as a relative moderate by voters in 2016.

perry: I understand many voters said that Trump was more moderate than Clinton.

But I just have a hard time with this idea that the candidate who ran calling for a ban on Muslims traveling to the United States and suggested that he would “lock up” his opponent was the moderate candidate.

natesilver: IDK, I think we’ve shifted from a media environment in which a lot of outlets took an (implicitly center or center-left) “view from nowhere” to one in which the media is more outspoken, and the difference between partisan and nonpartisan media is a little blurrier.

And I think that’s shifted the assumptions about whether centrism is electorally advantageous in a direction that claims that, actually, elections are all about turning out your base. But I don’t think there’s actually any evidence that how you win elections has changed.

julia_azari: I don’t think I read Matt’s piece but that’s not gonna stop me from saying I’m not sure I think the discussion around moderate candidates is useful. Even if Trump was thought of as a moderate, he ran in a way that criticized the status quo.

Basically I’ve become one of those Twitter trolls who reads the headline and then makes a critique.

natesilver: Trump also won independents 46-42 though!

sarahf: We can’t downplay just how much Clinton and Trump were disliked in 2016, though. Yes, Trump won, but that might say more about how we think about women in politics more than anything else.

natesilver: What if Clinton had run as more of a centrist, though? Would she have gotten more than 8 percent of the Republican vote? The Democrats had a pretty darn liberal platform.

julia_azari: My suspicion is that it’s a wash, but I may be discounting the impact of Democrats being perceived as too left/liberal.

sarahf: If Clinton had higher favorables, I don’t think it would have mattered how she ran, i.e. centrist or super liberal.

perry: So that gets to the real question. Would Democrats be marginally better off if AOC

and company were a little less prominent till December 2020?

sarahf: Yes, I think that’s the argument Pelosi and leadership are making. I just don’t think it’s particularly salient. But I also haven’t seen the attack ads yet, I suppose.

perry: My own, non-data judgement, is yes, Democrats would be slightly better off if AOC and her allies were less prominent in the run-up to the 2020 election. Why? Because having issues of race and identity (like immigration policy and four very liberal, female people of color) being central to the presidential election is hard for Democrats. They have become the party of people of color but most voters are white and this is especially true in key swing states (in particular, Michigan and Wisconsin). Also, Trump is likely to run a 2020 campaign about race and identity that raises the question of who should represent America–forcing voters to take sides.

Pelosi, I assume, does not want the 2020 election to be seen by the public as a battle between AOC’s vision of America (even if Biden is the Democratic nominee) and Trump’s vision of America. And I think she is right to be concerned about that. This is not a new challenge for Democrats. Hillary Clinton was probably not helped by the rise of Black Lives Matter preceding the 2016 election, and backlash to the civil rights movement arguably helped Richard Nixon win the 1972 election.

natesilver: I guess the counterargument, which folks were sorta alluding to above, is that Pelosi can push back against the Squad to show that actually she’s the “reasonable,” moderate one. I’m not sure I buy that counterargument, but it’s an argument.

julia_azari: YES, THE GALAXY BRAIN TAKE.

My read on this is that this stuff is always bubbling under the surface, also. Like you can’t indefinitely ignore race issues because they’re tricky politically.

natesilver: Democrats derive certain benefits from having a more diverse coalition, one of which is that the coalition is simply broader — more people identify as Democrats in this country than Republicans. It also entails certain costs, including tension among different parts of your constituency that can have racial undertones (or even overtones).

The hard part for Democrats right now is that nonwhite voters are significantly disempowered by the Electoral College, and especially by the Senate.

Model Talk: New Predictions For A Brave New NBA World

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Since the NBA never stops, we’re proud to announce that our projection model for the 2019-2020 season has formally launched! Nate Silver joins to discuss how the model is assessing the NBA, which new metrics are still in development and what our model suggests about the upcoming season.

The British Open begins on Thursday, with Northern Ireland’s own Rory McIlroy heading into the tournament as the favorite. We’ll break down his chances of success in this final installment of the PGA season.

Our Rabbit Hole this week dives into the dramatic tiebreakers that decided the winners of both the 2019 Cricket World Cup and Wimbledon men’s final. Sticky wickets, indeed!

What we’re looking at this week:

Our 2019-2020 NBA model is up!
Narratives to keep an eye on heading into the British Open.
The unprecedented ending to the Cricket World Cup, explained.

2019-20 NBA Predictions

How this works: These forecasts are based on 50,000 simulations of the rest of the season. Elo ratings — which power the pure Elo forecast — are a measure of team strength based on head-to-head results, margin of victory and quality of opponent. Our CARMELO forecast doesn’t account for wins and losses; it is based entirely on our CARMELO player projections, which estimate each player’s future performance based on the trajectory of other, similar NBA players. Read more »

Design and development by Jay Boice, Rachael Dottle, Ella Koeze and Gus Wezerek. Statistical model by Nate Silver. Additional contributions by Neil Paine. Illustration by Elias Stein.

Politics Podcast: Trump’s Racist Tweets

By Galen Druke, Nate Silver, Clare Malone and Perry Bacon Jr., Galen Druke, Nate Silver, Clare Malone and Perry Bacon Jr., Galen Druke, Nate Silver, Clare Malone and Perry Bacon Jr. and Galen Druke, Nate Silver, Clare Malone and Perry Bacon Jr.












 












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On Sunday, President Trump tweeted that “‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen” who are critical of his administration’s policies should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” His tweet seemed to be directed at four congresswomen of color: Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley. His comments have sparked a firestorm — at least among Democrats.

In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the team discusses the context of Trump’s tweets and how Americans are likely to react. The crew also debates how seriously Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell should take a Democratic challenge for his seat in Kentucky in 2020. Plus, even though Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are ideologically similar, their supporters differ in some significant ways.

You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button in the audio player above or by downloading it in iTunes , the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen .

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast publishes Monday evenings, with additional episodes throughout the week. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes . Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.