"The debate over swing voters versus mobilizing the base, explained"

[Ted King]

https://www.vox.com/2019/9/11/20856802/s...0-election

The professional liberal class is tired of courting swing voters. The path back to the White House, they argue, isn’t through racing to the center but racing left to mobilize and expand the Democratic base.
- - - - -
Absolutely nothing about this argument is new — it in fact very strongly echoes late-’80s disputes between Jesse Jackson and the Democratic Leadership Council — except for the fact that party professionals are taking the mobilization side of the dispute more seriously these days. Indeed, Ron Brownstein reports there’s only “a narrow majority that favors focusing on ordinarily Republican-leaning voters repulsed by Trump.”

The truth, however, is while mobilization is unquestionably important to winning elections, so is flipping swing voters. Activists who want to push Democrats to the left while still winning can do so by identifying popular progressive ideas to run on. But the notion that there’s some mobilization strategy that will eliminate the need to cater to the median voter is a fantasy.
- - - - -
The notion that swing voters — voters who back one part in some elections and the other party in others — are mythical is itself a myth.

The 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study conducted a large-sample poll and found that 6.7 million Trump voters said they voted for Barack Obama in 2012 and 2.7 million Clinton voters said they voted for Mitt Romney in 2016. In other words, about 11 percent of Trump voters say they were Obama voters four years earlier, and about 4 percent of Clinton voters say they were Romney voters four years earlier.

By the same token, Yair Ghitza of the Democratic data firm Catalist estimates that while Democrats did make significant turnout-related gains in 2018, about 89 percent of their improvement vote margin is attributable to swing voting.

Of course, in all these cases, the numbers of people involved are relatively small. The vast majority of Trump’s 2016 voters were people who also backed Mitt Romney in 2012, and the vast majority of them backed down-ballot Republicans in 2018. If you want to understand the psychology of the typical Trump supporter, there’s nothing more to it than that he’s a loyal partisan who votes for all kinds of Republicans. But if you want to understand the difference between an election where Democrats win (2012 and 2018) and one where they lose (2016), then it’s vote-switching that’s playing a major role.

What’s more, there’s little reason to believe the sharp ideological tradeoff often posited by mobilization proponents really exists.
Drop-off voters are more moderate than consistent Democrats

These arguments about turnout and swing voters, of course, aren’t just abstract arguments about election tactics. They represent contrasting ideological visions in which the proponents of a mobilization-focused strategy also hope to build support for more left-wing policy ideas.

But this is where the data is actually pretty clear. Even data marshaled by a mobilization enthusiast like McElwee shows that consistent Democratic Party voters are the most left-wing kind of voter around. In other words, Obama voters who went on to back Clinton are more liberal across a range of policy areas than Obama voters who stayed home in 2016, Obama voters who went third party in 2016, and Obama voters who switched to Trump.

I don't think Democratic Party activists want to hear that kind of talk.

[Speedy]

It’s all about turnout. Too many people simply don’t care enough to bother to vote.

[deckeda]

It would seem non-white women would be a particular target in Texas, which could swing Democratic (and potentially give a Democrat the presidency ... ) if
they rise up: https://beta.washingtonpost.com/politics...-vote-all/

[Lizabeth]

It boils down to persuading people that don’t bother to vote to go vote. Which is one of the hardest things to do.

[rjmacs]

Lizabeth wrote:
It boils down to persuading people that don’t bother to vote to go vote. Which is one of the hardest things to do.

In many cases, because the ask is the equivalent of asking loyalty in advance of benefit from people who routinely find promised benefits lacking after the election...

[mattkime]

Ug, why do dems have to worry about swing voters while republicans wink at white supremacists?


That said, i do think that listening to people wins them over. Dems could do worse than that. Aiming for the middle with wishy washy positions doesn't work.

[deckeda]

Of course, the problem is that a candidate needs to be everywhere at once, talking to everyone. If they could all do that, anyone could get elected. Easy!

But yeah you need "the middle;" it's where most people actually are. The rest, the swingers, are hopefully targeted. You target the ones you think you need and ignore the rest. Unless you can be everywhere, attracting everyone (see above.) Make a mistake, and there go the electoral votes.