While Trump did talk about mass deportations, he also emphasized the violent criminal element he wanted to go after. How would people feel if they knew that instead of targeting violent criminals, limited resources were being used to deport random people who were not a threat to anyone? I'm thinking of how hard he tried to push the narrative around the altered image of Kilmer Abrego Garcia's hand with alleged gang symbols on it. It seems like he was desperately trying to redirect attention to justify what he was doing.
My concern about so much attention to one wrongly deported person, was it gave the impression all the others deserved to be deported. They were dropped from the conversation, when the real emergency was the careless and cruel rounding up of good residents and even citizens. Also, undocumented criminals are already arrested and dealt with- contrary to MAGA lore. On the Dems messaging, they really do represent the views of most Americans- but can’t seem to utilize that fact. Micro targeting of social issues seems too easy for MAGA to weaponize, while universal moral issues can reach far more constituents. If Dems get the big things right, the variety of special needs can be addressed as well. But the reverse approach has failed. Great article!
One thing I'd love to see would be this analysis excluding Trump voters.
Because not a single Democratic attempt to pull in the mythical conservative moderate who might vote Democratic has worked in my lifetime. And every presidential election in my lifetime has hinged on Democratic turnout, while Republican turnout remains relatively stable. And more people abstain each election than vote for either party.
So if we say that the goal should be driving turnout among people who *haven't* gone all in on fascism, who both wildly outnumber Trump voters and are definitely easier to convince, what do the stats look like then? Because if 40% of the electorate supports blanket deportations, but 3/4 of that is Trump supporters, then what we should read that as is only 1/6th of the Democratic target audience supports blanket deportations.
Which would be make supporting them *extremely* stupid.
I was thinking more along the lines of actually having civil rights and economics policies to the left of George W Bush, and not alienating their progressive base in a race to the bottom appealing to bigotry.
You mean ... the strategy they've been doing? Move right and appeal to centrists, focus on middle of the road economic policy, and either quietly or overtly drop civil rights from their platform?
That is exactly not what the Party has been doing and it paid for it with 2 terms of Trump. Example: Biden/Harris administration. If the conversation is on open borders, defund the police, required DEI policies for government contractors, 1st day on the term EO allowing trans girls to compete in scholastic sports. Then the focus is definitely NOT centrist. It's a losing policy strategy that then requires turnout focus in order to win
Except the Democrats either literally never run on any of that, or it was popular. They ran on the opposite of most of that.
- They offered a draconianly vicious border bill that would have made the Bush administration blush (but which qualifies as centrist these days)
- They harshly rejected defunding the police and *increased* funding for them, and cheerfully backed police crackdowns on student antiwar protestors.
- The DEI policies were basically a nothing-burger. It mattered to Trump voters who were never going to vote Democrat anyway and had almost no splash otherwise. The Democratic Party downplayed them pretty heavily and definitely never ran on them, and there is no polling evidence that this was an issue which drove voters away.
- Trans rights is an issue with majority popular support nationwide, super majority support among independents, and almost total support among Democratic voters. Which is probably which is didn't help when Harris threw them under the bus.
I remain distraught by the Democratic Party’s inability reset itself after the 2024 results. SOOO many articles, including Elliott’s posts, about the Party’s internal debates about “move to the center” vs. “double-down on progressivism”. There are other ways the debate gets expressed, but no consensus (and no candidates) are emerging.
This isn’t a 2024 problem. The Party over-interpreted its progressive mandate 10 years ago and layered that with bad assumptions about long-term demographic tendencies to vote Democratic. This kind of wheel-spinning about audience (voter) targeting and messaging happens when the listener (voter) is not understood.
I’ve built a consultancy helping businesses address these issues with potential buyers of their products and see so many analogies to the Party’s struggles (BTW, I’m trying to identify a group to which I can volunteer my time to help the Party, leaning on my clients’ successes).
Some quick reactions to the Party’s voter targeting, positioning, and messaging:
* I don’t know if/when the Party is talking to me as a voter. The Party hasn’t determined its constituency; it’s impossible to develop a platform and urgent, compelling messages without a clear understanding of who the listeners (voters) are.
* Defining the target voters and compelling messages must account for voter differences in primary / special / off-year / general elections
* Everything I’m experiencing as a voter is either too general to compel me (“more voters in the tent”), or in reaction to Republican positions (“less woke”). It would be like your bank saying “we welcome all depositors” or “the bank down the street isn’t friendly”
I'm not concerned at this point about presidential candidates emerging. What I want to see is Democrats at all levels going out and stating our values while pointing out the consequences of the current Republican agenda--in so much as it is an agenda. Heather Cox Richardson, in her Politics Talk, also stated that it is too soon for a presidential candidate to emerge. We need lots of people speaking up, and when that happens, someone will emerge.
As for other races, The Down Ballot Substack keeps track of the candidates jumping into all races below the presidential race.
The set of people who pay attention to the media also may be more likely to respond to polls. Higher information folks vote much more reliably, so it probably evens out.
In the paragraph beginning “By contrast…” do you mean to say “…the group that saw our messaging about Abrego Garcia FIRST was much more opposed to mass deportation…”?
I think left-leaning centrists talk about Dem opinion like it's malleable and GOP opinion like it's the tides because they believe they and most of their audience can't possibly overcome the influence of right-wing media. But even if that's true of the current MAGA hardcore, that group is not most people, and there's no need to give everyone up to MAGA framing.
Centrists also present themselves as pragmatists even in the context of their perceived audience. "People trust Trump on immigration and less on the economy so why waste effort on the former." But, like, obviously people can change their beliefs based on messaging on immigration. Many of them distrust Dems not as a result of lived experience but because they were told "migrant crime" every day for a year and then told "they're eating the dogs." So introduce to them some reason to distrust the GOP here - they don't verify their target, they don't obey the courts, they don't prioritize, they do in fact go after "one of the good ones," they use unnecessary cruelty, they assume everyone including citizens are lying to them. They simply are not trustworthy Trust in the GOP on immigration is not a rule of nature.
Lot of different angles to this basic finding: The deportations Trump is doing are far more comprehensive and intrusive than the one people “voted for,” which may have costs in public opinion.
I think the "trust" language helps a lot with understanding how someone could "vote for" Trump without "voting for" precisely what the administration is doing. Some people didn't know what the current administration was promising and trusted it would be something they approve of (voting for a representative, which is reasonable in the abstract). Some people did know and trusted that it would be better than the haters said it would be (I'm less sympathetic here but the end result is the same). People in both of these groups can probably be persuaded to turn on the administration (though not necessarily toward Dems) on immigration at least if they can be shown that their trust - however uninformed or naive it was - has been violated.
Persuasive data and analysis, GEM. Well done!
While Trump did talk about mass deportations, he also emphasized the violent criminal element he wanted to go after. How would people feel if they knew that instead of targeting violent criminals, limited resources were being used to deport random people who were not a threat to anyone? I'm thinking of how hard he tried to push the narrative around the altered image of Kilmer Abrego Garcia's hand with alleged gang symbols on it. It seems like he was desperately trying to redirect attention to justify what he was doing.
My concern about so much attention to one wrongly deported person, was it gave the impression all the others deserved to be deported. They were dropped from the conversation, when the real emergency was the careless and cruel rounding up of good residents and even citizens. Also, undocumented criminals are already arrested and dealt with- contrary to MAGA lore. On the Dems messaging, they really do represent the views of most Americans- but can’t seem to utilize that fact. Micro targeting of social issues seems too easy for MAGA to weaponize, while universal moral issues can reach far more constituents. If Dems get the big things right, the variety of special needs can be addressed as well. But the reverse approach has failed. Great article!
Thanks for the good data, 'immigraiton' is a very important issue these days...
Thanks for including R results in footnotes
One thing I'd love to see would be this analysis excluding Trump voters.
Because not a single Democratic attempt to pull in the mythical conservative moderate who might vote Democratic has worked in my lifetime. And every presidential election in my lifetime has hinged on Democratic turnout, while Republican turnout remains relatively stable. And more people abstain each election than vote for either party.
So if we say that the goal should be driving turnout among people who *haven't* gone all in on fascism, who both wildly outnumber Trump voters and are definitely easier to convince, what do the stats look like then? Because if 40% of the electorate supports blanket deportations, but 3/4 of that is Trump supporters, then what we should read that as is only 1/6th of the Democratic target audience supports blanket deportations.
Which would be make supporting them *extremely* stupid.
Maybe some PSAs about civics and citizen duty? We could re-air School House Rock!
I was thinking more along the lines of actually having civil rights and economics policies to the left of George W Bush, and not alienating their progressive base in a race to the bottom appealing to bigotry.
As should be obvious now. Dems focusing on voter turnout instead of better (i.e., centrist) policies is a losing strategy
You mean ... the strategy they've been doing? Move right and appeal to centrists, focus on middle of the road economic policy, and either quietly or overtly drop civil rights from their platform?
The strategy that's been losing badly?
That is exactly not what the Party has been doing and it paid for it with 2 terms of Trump. Example: Biden/Harris administration. If the conversation is on open borders, defund the police, required DEI policies for government contractors, 1st day on the term EO allowing trans girls to compete in scholastic sports. Then the focus is definitely NOT centrist. It's a losing policy strategy that then requires turnout focus in order to win
Except the Democrats either literally never run on any of that, or it was popular. They ran on the opposite of most of that.
- They offered a draconianly vicious border bill that would have made the Bush administration blush (but which qualifies as centrist these days)
- They harshly rejected defunding the police and *increased* funding for them, and cheerfully backed police crackdowns on student antiwar protestors.
- The DEI policies were basically a nothing-burger. It mattered to Trump voters who were never going to vote Democrat anyway and had almost no splash otherwise. The Democratic Party downplayed them pretty heavily and definitely never ran on them, and there is no polling evidence that this was an issue which drove voters away.
- Trans rights is an issue with majority popular support nationwide, super majority support among independents, and almost total support among Democratic voters. Which is probably which is didn't help when Harris threw them under the bus.
https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2024/10/23/voters-prefer-candidates-who-are-supportive-of-transgender-rights-think-recent-political-ads-have-gotten-mean-spirited-and-out-of-hand
What "centrist" policies are you imagining they run on anyway, that they *didn't* run on this last election cycle?
I remain distraught by the Democratic Party’s inability reset itself after the 2024 results. SOOO many articles, including Elliott’s posts, about the Party’s internal debates about “move to the center” vs. “double-down on progressivism”. There are other ways the debate gets expressed, but no consensus (and no candidates) are emerging.
This isn’t a 2024 problem. The Party over-interpreted its progressive mandate 10 years ago and layered that with bad assumptions about long-term demographic tendencies to vote Democratic. This kind of wheel-spinning about audience (voter) targeting and messaging happens when the listener (voter) is not understood.
I’ve built a consultancy helping businesses address these issues with potential buyers of their products and see so many analogies to the Party’s struggles (BTW, I’m trying to identify a group to which I can volunteer my time to help the Party, leaning on my clients’ successes).
Some quick reactions to the Party’s voter targeting, positioning, and messaging:
* I don’t know if/when the Party is talking to me as a voter. The Party hasn’t determined its constituency; it’s impossible to develop a platform and urgent, compelling messages without a clear understanding of who the listeners (voters) are.
* Defining the target voters and compelling messages must account for voter differences in primary / special / off-year / general elections
* Everything I’m experiencing as a voter is either too general to compel me (“more voters in the tent”), or in reaction to Republican positions (“less woke”). It would be like your bank saying “we welcome all depositors” or “the bank down the street isn’t friendly”
* It’s late: primaries are underway
I'm not concerned at this point about presidential candidates emerging. What I want to see is Democrats at all levels going out and stating our values while pointing out the consequences of the current Republican agenda--in so much as it is an agenda. Heather Cox Richardson, in her Politics Talk, also stated that it is too soon for a presidential candidate to emerge. We need lots of people speaking up, and when that happens, someone will emerge.
As for other races, The Down Ballot Substack keeps track of the candidates jumping into all races below the presidential race.
The set of people who pay attention to the media also may be more likely to respond to polls. Higher information folks vote much more reliably, so it probably evens out.
In the paragraph beginning “By contrast…” do you mean to say “…the group that saw our messaging about Abrego Garcia FIRST was much more opposed to mass deportation…”?
Ack, thanks Aaron.
I think left-leaning centrists talk about Dem opinion like it's malleable and GOP opinion like it's the tides because they believe they and most of their audience can't possibly overcome the influence of right-wing media. But even if that's true of the current MAGA hardcore, that group is not most people, and there's no need to give everyone up to MAGA framing.
Centrists also present themselves as pragmatists even in the context of their perceived audience. "People trust Trump on immigration and less on the economy so why waste effort on the former." But, like, obviously people can change their beliefs based on messaging on immigration. Many of them distrust Dems not as a result of lived experience but because they were told "migrant crime" every day for a year and then told "they're eating the dogs." So introduce to them some reason to distrust the GOP here - they don't verify their target, they don't obey the courts, they don't prioritize, they do in fact go after "one of the good ones," they use unnecessary cruelty, they assume everyone including citizens are lying to them. They simply are not trustworthy Trust in the GOP on immigration is not a rule of nature.
Lot of different angles to this basic finding: The deportations Trump is doing are far more comprehensive and intrusive than the one people “voted for,” which may have costs in public opinion.
I think the "trust" language helps a lot with understanding how someone could "vote for" Trump without "voting for" precisely what the administration is doing. Some people didn't know what the current administration was promising and trusted it would be something they approve of (voting for a representative, which is reasonable in the abstract). Some people did know and trusted that it would be better than the haters said it would be (I'm less sympathetic here but the end result is the same). People in both of these groups can probably be persuaded to turn on the administration (though not necessarily toward Dems) on immigration at least if they can be shown that their trust - however uninformed or naive it was - has been violated.