The Democrats' problem in the Senate is not progressives | Weekly roundup for November 2, 2025

Their big problem is not a lack of moderates, it's nationalization of party brands. And: A new era for the exit poll; The end game of partisan gerrymandering; and how Substack's AI works. + more!

Dear readers,

Context for this week’s lead data story: In recent months, I’ve found myself arguing that ideological moderation is a false promise to fix the Democrats’ electoral problems. Ideological moderation has small effects on elections that would not have been enough to flip the outcome in the House or Senate to Democrats in 2024, and proponents of the strategy base their conclusions on faulty data analysis, a deep-seated Strategist’s Fallacy about voter psychology, or both. I have said moderation is akin to “putting a band-aid on a bullet hole.”

But I do not deny the Democratic Party has problems. Working class voters, the constituency the party says it is advocating for, say the party is out of touch and doesn’t care about them. This matters particularly in the Senate, where rural, white, working-class voters are overrepresented. So, if moderation isn’t enough to fix that problem, what is?

My case, which I am developing for a longer essay, is that you have to think bigger, be cr…