Elizabeth Warren is gaining steam
A focus on ambitious policy and "economic populism"—er, "patriotism"—could pay dividends
What to do when you’re expecting a polling bounce
The takeaway: Elizabeth Warren is gaining steam. In the latest numbers out of Iowa, she is tied for second vs Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg and, for the first time, knocked her deficit versus Joe Biden into the single digits. Warren has posted impressive gains over her March numbers out of the Hawkeye State. Nationally, the picture is similar. Warren is now equaling her January numbers for her best performance of the 2020 campaign so far. It is early days, yes, but could this be the early signs that her long game—focusing on policy proposals, especially on class-based politics—is paying off?
Elizabeth Warren is tied for second in Iowa, improving a fair amount over her March numbers. Se here (from MSNBC):
She’s rising in the ranks of national polling. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s in second place in the averages by this time next month (or, hey, even next week). Here’s the latest data from Morning Consult:
Keep in mind that other pollsters—YouGov’s numbers for The Economist included— show her doing better, and still some others show her doing worse.
The Senator from Massachusetts is “proving her doubters wrong”, writes Washington Post columnist Katrina vanden Heuvel. Vanden Heuvel points out the obvious contrast with her earlier position; a month ago, CNN’s Harry Enten wrote that the issues she’s focused on aren’t what voters care about. Harry’s article was titled “Why is Elizabeth Warren struggling? Democrats aren’t looking for policy”.
That may be true. Indeed, Harry’s got some data to make the point:
Voters instead are prizing other qualities, such as leadership. The Quinnipiac poll shows that by a 51% to 38% margin, Democrats and Democratic leaning independents prefer someone they think would be a "great leader" than someone who has "great policy ideas".
And Harry also presents a conclusion I agree with:
The lesson here is pretty clear: The way to beat Biden in the Democratic primary season isn't to show he is out-of-step with the electorate on issues. If that were the way forward, Biden would probably already be losing.
Rather, the way you beat Biden if you're a Democratic candidate for president is by, among other things, proving that he isn't a good leader and can't beat Trump.
If other Democratic candidates are unable to do this, then Biden will likely be the Democratic nominee.
But I’m not so sure Warren lacking the aura of a leader—whatever that means—is what is causing her to “struggle”. Rather, I think Warren is struggling to do better in national polls because she hasn’t forged the right coalition (yet). Were I to stop here I’d be mistaking a symptom for a cause, but allow me to expand upon this point. To use an overused political reporter phrase, It’s The Demographic, Stupid.
Take the Economist/YouGov numbers as the prime example. Joe Biden is winning the primary. because he has a yuuuge lead among black Democrats, especially those without college degrees. The competition for second place is thus really happening among white voters, with Biden, Sanders, Warren and Buttigieg each getting about a quarter from each sub-demographic group (like age, education, etc.)—and the big cleavages among whites looks to be between (a) older and younger voters and (b) college- and non-college-educated voters. Those ages 65 and up are for Biden. Those 45-64 are for Warren. And white voters younger than 45 are for Sanders. Similarly, non-college-educated whites are for Biden and Sanders, but the college-educated ones are for Warren. Among both demographics, Sanders has been losing steam.
Now it could be that younger and older, non-college-educated white voters “don’t care about policy”. But in primary campaigns, I think they do. It’s not 100-0, but it’s also not 0-100. The social science on general elections yields itself to Harry’s headline (the numbers in the article are still apt) in general elections because party identification colors voters’ judgements, but decision-making in primaries is different. In fact, Warren is doing particularly well among the Democratic primary voters for whom policy is a factor (namely, educated ones and liberals). But this means that she has gained a foothold among a smaller slice of Democratic pie than the others. (White, educated, middle-aged voters—especially females—make up a small slice of the pie.)
Another point to be raised is that perhaps Democrats “don’t care” (again, to the extent that is true) “about policy”… yet. I imagine when the debates start taking up airwaves and the ideas competition really gets catapulted to the forefront of the 2020 coverage that policy will “start” to “matter”. The debates, of course, are really when Bernie Sanders started to gain steam in 2016. Maybe two weeks from now that’s when Warren will. (That’s when the first debate is, by the way—two weeks from now. Can you believe it??)
The good news for Warren is that Sanders’s base looks to be wavering, perhaps for other reasons and perhaps when the same. When we spend a bit more time really digging into the cross tabs of the national polls, we can suggest answers on why. But if I do any more of that tonight I might end up falling asleep until 2021.
Editor’s note:
Thanks for reading my thoughts on this subject, and thanks for subscribing! Your membership adds up and makes all this newslettering possible (reminder: I do all this work independently). Please consider sharing online or with a friend; the more readers, the merrier. Reminder that, apart from getting premium articles, subscribers can comment below each post and participate in exclusive threads. I think that’s pretty cool. Maybe it will provide a good avenue for sharing polling 🔥hot takes🔥 with you all? I’ll try something tomorrow.
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—Elliott
I'd like to know more about "why." For example, what fundamentally makes younger voters more liberal? I see lots of "they are urban," or that sort of thing. But what about their lived, daily experience besides just their geographic location makes them more liberal that conservative? Not sure if any polling or research has been done on this. Same for other segments of the electorate, I guess.