Electability Is Voters’ Priority Issue In 2020
The 2020 Democratic primary field is crowded. There’s a black, female frontrunner, a gay mayor, a black senator, progressive white women, a Hispanic housing secretary, an Asian American businessman, and white men who range from centrist dad to socialist grandpa. With 11 announced candidates and 12 still deciding, voters have their work cut out for them.
At this point in the race, polling data on individual candidates are difficult to interpret. However, a mid-December CNN poll asked Iowa Democrats about the most important quality in a 2020 presidential candidate. The majority of caucus-going Hawkeyes answered, “can beat Trump,” over options such as “shares [my] positions.”
More recent polls have arrived at similar conclusions. In a late-January ABC News/Washington Post poll, 43 percent of Democratic respondents said it was more important to them to choose a candidate that had the best chance of beating Trump than it was to choose a candidate that is closest to them on the issues. Another early-February Monmouth University poll found that 56 percent of Democratic respondents would rather have a candidate with whom they do not agree on most issues but was stronger against Trump than the 33 percent who said the opposite.
So, while candidate-level polling is mostly suggestive, the priority of the Democratic primary electorate could not be more apparent – Democratic voters, first and foremost, want to oust Trump.[su_pullquote]The priority of the Democratic primary electorate could not be more apparent – Democratic voters, first and foremost, want to oust Trump.[/su_pullquote]
This finding is probably not too surprising. According to FiveThirtyEight (as of February 1st), by two-year net approval rating, Trump is one of the least-popular presidents ever at -16 percent.
Since the task of removing the president has become Democratic voters’ foremost concern, the electorate will be focused on picking an “electable” candidate that has the best chance of defeating Trump. However, what makes a candidate electable is far from clear.
For instance, one voter might tell you that the electable Democratic candidate is Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who could energize progressives and perhaps the establishment base. Another might say that the electable candidate is Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), who outperformed her state’s partisan lean (her margin of victory in the 2018 midterms was over 24 points, while Clinton won by just 1.5 points in 2016) and could appeal to ideological moderates. Another voter might tell you that the electable Democratic candidate is Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Beto O’Rourke, or Joe Biden – simply put, white men.
[su_pullquote]Voters are often not sure about what makes a candidate electable, as electability can often act as a proxy for individual biases.[/su_pullquote]Basically, voters are often not sure about what makes a candidate electable, as electability can often act as a proxy for individual biases. That is an issue, because ambiguous concepts like electability can have adverse effects on the outcomes of elections.
First, it might distort the policy preferences of the electorate. If Democratic voters perceive moderate policy positions to be more electable, then progressive voters who compromise on their preferences might be left unsatisfied by the resulting government’s moderate policy. Political scientists refer to this phenomenon as strategic voting – when a voter supports another candidate more strongly than their sincere preference in order to prevent an undesirable outcome.
Strategic voting can also shut out individuals from underrepresented groups. For instance, voters who would otherwise vote for someone like Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA; likely the current frontrunner) might choose not to, fearing that a black woman would not perform as a well as a Joe Biden in the general election. The result of this scenario is a cycle in which female and minority candidates are continually underrepresented in politics because they are currently underrepresented in politics – and thus, their electability is called into question.
[su_pullquote align=”right”]An electability-minded electorate would benefit from, yes, more (responsible) horserace coverage.[/su_pullquote]An electability-minded electorate would benefit from, yes, more (responsible) horserace coverage. Horserace coverage of elections is the focus on campaign tactics, polls, forecasts, demographics, and other data. Historically, the practice has been criticized for “ignoring the issues,” like healthcare, the environment, or the social safety net. Yet, if voters’ primary issue is electability – the horserace itself – there is a strong argument to be made for newsrooms to provide this information.
As we become an increasingly data-driven society, we are afforded a more empirical approach to covering politics and electability. Despite what statistically illiterate pundits may claim, polls are as accurate as they have ever been. This is true even of 2016, when the average polling error was 6.8 percent, compared to the historical 5.9 percent in all late-stage election polls since 1998, per FiveThirtyEight.
While we may never be able to accurately define “electability,” we can operationalize it using exit polling data and perpetual polling by organizations like Gallup, YouGov, and Pew. Questions like “Is Bernie Sanders struggling to appeal to the African American community?” or “Who are the Obama-Trump voters, and which candidate has the best chance of winning them back?” are potentially answerable – and newsrooms ought to report on these types of questions and answer them if the electorate is as concerned about electability as it says it is.
After all, do voters really want Joe Biden? Or do they just want Trump to go away?
Garrett Cunningham ‘19 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at cunningham.garrett@wustl.edu.