Democratic Demographics

Nate Silver’s Categories

Nate Silver identifies The 5 Corners Of The 2020 Democratic Primary as follows:

1. Party Loyalists
2. The Left
3. Millennials and Friends
4. Black voters
5. Hispanic voters (sometimes in combination with Asian voters)

His purpose in doing this is to predict who will win the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination (or, more specifically, to evaluate the chances of the various candidates).

The first problem with Silver’s categories is that it ignores older white voters who are neither party loyalists or “the left”. Another problem is that the ethnic/age categories overlap and are internally divided. For example, Silver acknowledges that younger blacks and Hispanics vote differently than older blacks and Hispanics. Finally, Silver ignores other important traits such as ideology and socioeconomic status.


In sum, I find Silver’s overlapping and incomplete, though possibly useful to political pros.

More Fundamental Groupings

A better categorization, for an amateur such as myself, is one which more clearly maps to the political landscape based upon ideology, as opposed to ethnicity or age. I have identified two Democratic constituencies (see Political/Economic Quadrants).

1. Neoliberal
2. Democratic Socialist

These categories are based upon the more fundamental attribute of whether is a person favors the status quo (neoliberal) or favors dramatic change. The alignment of candidates with categories is much more obvious here. Sanders, Warren, and Gabbart are more democratic socialist, while Biden, Harris, Booker, Gillibrand, Klobuchar, and Hickenlooper are more neoliberal. I’m not familiar with other candidates and I could be wrong about some of these as I don’t know many of the candidates very well.

Digging Deeper

Whether you start at the top with the obvious ideological groupings (neoliberal, democratic socialist), or with Silver’s mix of ethnicity, age, and ideology, you may want to look deeper for greater accuracy.  Here is a more comprehensive demographic breakdown:

1. Ideology
1. Neoliberal
2. Democratic socialist
2. Economic status
1. Poor
2. Working class
3. Upper middle class
4. Rich
3. Race / Citizenship history
1. Native
1. White
2. Black
2. Relatively recent immigrant
1. Hispanic
2. Asian
3. Other
4. Age
1. Millennial
2. Generation X
3. Boomer
5. Location
1. Density
1. Urban
2. Suburban
3. Rural
2. Region
1. Northeast
2. South
3. Midwest
4. West
6. Gender
1. Male
2. Female
7. Education
1. High school or less
2. College degree
3. Post graduate degree
8. Religion
1. Christian
1. Catholic
2. Protestant
2. Jewish
3. Islamic
4. Other (humanist, atheist, Buddhist, ...)

Implications

The best candidates will obviously have broad spectrum appeal.  This is especially true with regard to race / ethnicity, as a candidate identified too closely with any one group will have correspondingly less appeal to other groups.  Silver tries to show broad spectrum appeal by measuring each of his candidates across his 5 factors.  Kamala Harris seems to come out among the best in this view (very strong with blacks and only somewhat weak with the left), while Bernie Sanders fares poorly (very weak with party loyalists and weak with Hispanic/Asian and blacks). 

The outlook changes dramatically when you consider economic status, which is a huge factor in every racial, ethnic, and age group.  A candidate who does well in the middle class groups will likely do well across these other categories, in my opinion.  The middle class has the numbers, and there is little offset in supporting the middle class. Thus, while a candidate closely identified with blacks may put off other ethnic groups, a candidate closely identified with the middle class will not lose many votes from the rich or poor.  Campaign contributions, however, are another matter.

Critical to the neoliberal - democratic socialist divide is the issue of money.  Money makes the world go around, and nowhere more so than in the U.S.  Politics is certainly not exempt.  Social democrats traditionally abhor this fact, but are powerless to do anything about it.  Neoliberals recognize money as a necessary evil.  This is the very real divide within the Democratic party, and one that the winning candidate will have to bridge, in my opinion.

2020 is an usual year because of the events of 2016.  The neoliberal / upper classes took a huge hit with the defeat of Hillary Clinton by the rabid populist Donald Trump.  In the wake of that defeat, all Democratic candidates have endorsed the positions of democratic socialist Bernie Sanders.  Thus, Sanders has an unusual advantage for a populist in terms of credibility, whereas the neoliberal candidates are at a corresponding disadvantage.  Elizabeth Warren also has considerable credibility without the baggage of being despised by party loyalists.    It’s also possible that other candidates will somehow be able to boost their populist credibility and compete with Sanders and Warren in the democratic socialist quadrant, but no candidate seems an obvious bet to do that at the present time.

Related to money are special interest groups.  Such groups are critical to successful campaigning and governance.  Such groups need to be reckoned with and the neoliberal status quo has more long-standing relationships at their disposal, as compared to the populists.  Also, the neoliberal upper classes have more power than the lower classes to set the rules of the game and control the narrative.

Thus, in the 2020 Democratic race, the populists have an usual opportunity to break through, but are facing the usual money and special interest group advantages held by the neoliberal status quo segment.   The winning candidate will have to explicitly recognize the unfairness and inequality in our country and thus attract the votes of the poor and working class, while assuaging the fears of the special interests, neoliberals and upper classes that their world will be unduly upset.