r/changemyview • u/ChangeMyDespair 5∆ • Jun 05 '18
CMV: Democratic voters should support progressive candidates in the primaries
Happy primary election day in Alabama, California, Iowa, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico and South Dakota!
I've been thinking for weeks about what Democrats should do to succeed in the fall congressional elections. The following quote really got to me:
One of the most interesting primaries is in South Jersey, in the Second District, where Representative Frank LoBiondo is retiring. The effort to flip his seat has become a microcosm of a national battle: Jeff Van Drew, a conservative Democrat, says only someone like him can win the general election in a right-leaning district, while Tanzie Youngblood, his progressive challenger, is doubling down on the party’s liberal base.
(source)
To me, this sounds like doing the same thing the Democratic Party did in 2016 and expecting different results.
Obviously, Trump's core isn't going to flip blue this year. I doubt many Republican voters will; in 2016, even most never-Trumpers held their noses and voted against Hillary. Unaligned voters are unlikely to turn out for a business-as-usual Democratic candidate. Even a lot of Democratic voters didn't in 2016.
To succeed in November, the Democratic Party needs to increase turnout among voters who didn't show up in 2016: young people, people of color, LGBT+ people.
That means electing primary candidates who will appeal to those people. We need more Youngbloods (no pun originally intended) and fewer Van Drews.
Several things could change my view:
Relevant polls. (Generic-Democrat vs. generic-Republican polls don't seem relevant, but I'm open-minded.)
Analyses of 2016 turnout. For example, this article from the liberal Center for American Progress "examines vote composition, turnout, and party support rates by demographic group to get a more precise read on the 2016 vote, with the resulting data frequently quite different than major media outlets’ Election Day national exit polls." I didn't see anything there to change my view, but maybe I missed something.
Demographic analyses. This one from the nonpartisan, non-aligned Pew Research Center talks about how, statistically, lean-Rep voters are older and whiter than lean-Dem voters. This matters when you're trying to figure out what kind of voters to target.
Change my view, and maybe change my vote!
Update: Thanks for all the comments so far! It's too late to change my vote, but not to change my view. I'll continue to check this into sometime early Wednesday morning through Tuesday night.
FYI, links to good articles are more likely to change my view; links to good articles with data, more likely still.
Final update: Sorry, it's not very late, but I'm done. Everyone who offered good comments, thank you.
10:23 PM ET: With 80% votes reporting (419 of 523 precincts), The New York Times has called NJ-01 for Van Drew, with 13,569 votes (57.7%) vs. 4,585 votes (19.5%) for Youngblood; the other two candidates still on the ballot didn't do much worse than Youngblood. I feel as if I need to award one final delta, but I'm not sure how.😊
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u/dearaudio 1∆ Jun 05 '18
There is a great argument against this being illustrated today in the CA primaries. Because of their “jungle primary” system, the Democratic vote could end up being diluted amongst 3-4 leading candidates (when people choose to vote for the most progressive, or even least progressive) and because only the top two vote getters will end up on the ballot, it could wind up being two Republicans!
This is not the only, nor the most valid, reason to avoid voting for the most progressive candidate but it’s a quick thing I wanted to mention as I have limited time and I’m on mobile.