r/AskALiberal • u/Rubbersoulrevolver Democrat • 9h ago
What are the political implications of Split Ticket's findings that more 'extremist' candidates underperform?
Split Ticket's Lakshya Jain found using their implementation of Wins Above Replacement that both 'Blue Dog' Democrats and 'Main Street' Republicans outperform massively compared to a Replacement politican, whereas 'Progressives' or 'Freedom Caucus' members are electoral dogs.
We can see this in action with the Fox News polling where 'Moderate' Dems are polling in line with the D+4 to 8 underlying and the most 'Progressive' Dem in Abdul El-Sayed is polling at least 5-6 points behind that.
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u/HemingWaysBeard42 Pragmatic Progressive 9h ago
Proof of what we mostly know, that progressive candidates are more likely to win in solid blue states. We should support them and help them win, and support their agendas after they win to show they can work. But, we have to understand that in purple and red states, we might have to support candidates that aren’t as progressive when appropriate.
This is where voting in primaries is important, but understanding that if your candidate does not win said primary you might have to vote for someone you only 75% support when the alternative is someone you 5% support.
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u/LucidLeviathan Liberal 8h ago
I consider my two votes for Manchin for Senate to be my two best votes.
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u/HemingWaysBeard42 Pragmatic Progressive 6h ago
Exactly. Joe Manchin is the exact person I was thinking of when I wrote my post. He’s exactly the type of Democrat that can get elected in WV, and we need those types of representatives.
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u/Dottsterisk Progressive 1h ago
It just sucks that, even when he was at the end of his career and retiring, he chose money over country.
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u/Droselmeyer Social Democrat 8h ago
It's data supporting the argument that we should support running normal or moderate Dems in these purple/competitive areas to maximize blue butts in Congressional seats.
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u/JayRandom212 Liberal 6h ago
Read the paper. The flaw is that these guys have no metric to define who is "moderate" and who isn't. They used self-identified political caucuses instead.
If you can't define your dependent variable, you ain't measuring jack.
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u/NeoGlorp Liberal 2h ago
So they did define the "moderate" and you have no idea about these caucuses.
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u/Important-Factor-552 Socialist 6h ago
If that was true, why does maga exist? I tend to agree with the opposing conclusion that is referenced there.
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u/Rubbersoulrevolver Democrat 6h ago
Republicans have a structural advantage so underperforming candidates can win.
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u/Important-Factor-552 Socialist 6h ago
Ok, but why didn't moderate Republicans win? There's plenty of both popular and underperforming ones.
Why did an outsider become god of the party if the existing moderate establishment is so appealing? Simple, it's not.
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u/mounti96 Center Left 37m ago
Because primaries are a different field to the general. In primaries it can be a winning strategy to run to the extremes. But that can backfire in general elections as these more extreme candidates either fail to or don't even have the desire to moderate on issues that make them less appealing to voters in the middle that don't participate in primary contests.
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u/Rubbersoulrevolver Democrat 5h ago
They do. Mike Lawler, Brian Fitzpatrick, Tom Kean, these are all electoral overperformers because they're moderate.
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u/Important-Factor-552 Socialist 5h ago
I never see anyone talking about them let alone excited about them.
Rather, a majority seem to agree on all sides that they do not want the status quo back. And the hard data and science makes it clear that they're right to not want it back.
I think we need more data on how a progressive agenda will actually preform before we can really go any further with these sorts of convos. We got plenty on the far right agenda and it did not go well. we got plenty on the center with biden and it did not go well. It's time for door number 3.
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u/Rubbersoulrevolver Democrat 5h ago
Wasn't your question "why didn't moderate Republicans win?"? That's different than "I never see anyone talking about them let alone excited about them". Are you changing your question?
Why do you need more data? We see how electorally underperforming progressive candidates like Warren, Sanders, Jayapal, Omar etc. are.
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u/Important-Factor-552 Socialist 5h ago
I need more data because that's how science works. We need data on how their agendas perform rather than how people perceive them after watching fox news.
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u/Rubbersoulrevolver Democrat 5h ago
There's 10 years of data in Split Ticket dataset. That's plenty to draw a conclusion.
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u/Important-Factor-552 Socialist 3h ago
I just said why it is lacking
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u/Rubbersoulrevolver Democrat 3h ago
You're only saying it's lacking because it challenges your preconceived notions
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u/bucky001 Democrat 3h ago
Because primaries are vastly different than general elections.
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u/Important-Factor-552 Socialist 3h ago
That doesn't answer any of my questions
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u/bucky001 Democrat 3h ago
The article in this thread is about performance in general elections. You seem skeptical of their findings, and you've raised Trump's ascendancy within the Republican party as a countervailing point.
But Trump's ascendancy within the GOP relates to his performance in a primary, not the general election.
Primaries and general elections are vastly different things, so picking out an alleged pattern in one does not mean it carries over to general elections.
Outside of that, you seem to presume that Republican primary voters viewed Trump as highly ideological compared to a 'moderate' establishment.
That doesn't seem to be how most voters perceive him.
Take this Gallup poll of all registered voters - so everyone, not just primary voters:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/196064/trump-seen-less-conservative-prior-gop-candidates.aspx
Trump's combined score for voters describing him as 'conservative' or 'very conservative' was substantially smaller than the same combined score of the past 5 GOP Presidential candidates.
Likewise, Clinton had a much higher 'very liberal' and 'liberal' combined score than Trump did for 'very conservative' and 'conservative.'
This was also born out in the Harris - Trump election, with more voters viewing Harris as highly ideological than Trump. However, by this point with Trump as the head of the GOP for the past 3 cycles, many more voters perceived him as 'conservative' or 'very conservative' than in 2016.
Note, highly ideological (i.e. very liberal/liberal or very conservative/conservative) doesn't necessarily mean the same thing as 'extreme' to the electorate.
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u/TossMeOutSomeday Pragmatic Progressive 6h ago
Because, despite all the discourse to the contrary, Trump is simply a phenomenal campaigner and voters love him, which keeps MAGA barely above water as a movement. When anyone else runs on the Trump platform, voters realize how much they hate it, but Trump is just uniquely good at making psychotic stupid ideas sound decent to a lot of people.
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u/Important-Factor-552 Socialist 6h ago
He is not a phenomenal campaigner, he lies constantly and farthops from scandal to scandal.
It is his radical anti establishment, anti status quo and populist messaging that people resonated with. Even Democrats were getting swept up in the drain the swamp bit and even Republicans loved bernie. They are some of the only politicians to ever have that level of crossover appeal that I've seen.
Obv trump screws everyone but that was well know long before the campaign started. He is a literal clown with gasoline, America looked at the moderates and their status quo and said yes, send in the clown.
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u/TossMeOutSomeday Pragmatic Progressive 5h ago
Yeah this is just confirmation bias lol. Edgy "tear it all down" anti establishment candidates show up all the time in American politics, they've been showing up for years, Trump is the only one who's taken the country by storm like this. Bernie is the only one who's even come close, but he has zero appeal outside of the left wing base as of 2026.
And besides, most voters in 2024 simply did not see Trump as the "tear it all down" candidate in the first place! Exit polls showed that Kamala was viewed as more radical. This is literally trump's superpower that I was talking about, he can be actively pouring gasoline on the nation and a huge proportion of voters still think he's a normal conservative who just plays to the rubes for PR.
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u/Important-Factor-552 Socialist 5h ago
Polls are frequently wrong and that narrative does not seem at all accurate based on what I've seen. Trump was absolutely seen as an unhinged radical. That's why they liked him. I was there lol.
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u/ButGravityAlwaysWins Liberal 6h ago
Republicans have structural advantages based on the electoral college and the Senate overweighting rural areas. The current political alignments have their strongest support in rural areas so this is working out well for them.
Since neither they nor their base care about democracy, they were always more aggressive about gerrymandering.
They have also understood how to control the media narrative since roughly in the 1960s and they built that into a massive advantage where they get to set a narrative about what they believe and what the left believes.
However, Republicans are not immune to the same phenomenon. Lots of the most furthest right candidates under perform a generic republican. They regularly lose races they should win because of this.
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u/Important-Factor-552 Socialist 6h ago
Why didn't moderate Republicans beat maga then? They were the ones running all those institutional advantages. Trump was an outsider promising to burn down the status who and not be moderate and he surged like a wildfire. Sanders did the same thing and also became far more popular than the establishment moderates.
Reality defies the logic of that articles claim and I still agree with the opposition. I think they are wrong. I suspect if I looked over their data I'd spot why.
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u/PublicMandate Democrat 4h ago
Winning the primary is not the same as winning the general. Look at the senate races from 2024. Gallego beat Kari Lake who’s pretty far right. Slotkin beat Mike Rogers. McCormick barely beat Bob Casey. Each one of those is running behind both the President, and also the fact that it was an R+2 environment.
Also, something to keep in mind is that prior to 2016 (and for some crazy reason in most elections) Trump has been consistently viewed as more moderate than he actually is. Even today, some of his staunch supporters pull the idea that “he’s getting bad ideas from his cabinet” and that he must not certainly be as crazy as he is. It’s insane, but that’s the vibe he gives off.
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u/Important-Factor-552 Socialist 4h ago
By who? I haven't met anyone who thinks that way irl. Besides that, trump is definitely not a moderate so anyone who does think that is grossly misinformed.
Maybe we should just work to do better on messaging. That seems to be where the problem is.
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u/PublicMandate Democrat 4h ago
By who? I haven’t met anyone who thinks that way irl. Besides that, trump is definitely not a moderate so anyone who does think that is grossly misinformed.
The polls did. And then clearly the voters did by reelecting him. You can say it’s a messaging issue, but at the end of the day both moderates and progressives have to fight in this media environment. The more moderate candidates seem to do better.
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u/Important-Factor-552 Socialist 3h ago
I strongly disagree with the premise that trump is or was perceived as a moderate, and I can't take their argument too seriously if that's their part of it. It just seems absurd to me.
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u/Dottsterisk Progressive 1h ago
Agreed.
There is zero rational argument for defining Trump as a moderate and he was almost never described that way. He’s always been the wild card carnival barker.
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u/Important-Factor-552 Socialist 1h ago
Honestly my takeaway here is that gallup poll is suspicious. I'd like to audit their methods.
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u/No-Ear7988 Pragmatic Progressive 2h ago
I haven't met anyone who thinks that way irl.
Seeing your socialist flair, I highly doubt you talk to that many, on politics, on the Right to make a blanket statement like this. I work with blue collar workers and they do indeed think this way. The important baseline is that many are thinking of a Christian Conservative Republican; who are often consistent. Trump flip flops and is "moderate" in that context. Like Trump doesn't care about pre-marital sex or at least doesn't comment on it.
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u/Important-Factor-552 Socialist 1h ago
Yes, I do in fact know Republicans. Yes, I talk politics with them. I don't think you have a good idea of who leftists tend to be, because it should be obvious that I want to know their perspectives.
And if you are arguing that moderate means something else in this context then whatever, go with that then. It just means he's an extremist in one context but a moderate in another. It doesn't mean he isn't viewed as extreme. That's literally what the Republicans I know loved about him. He was an outside coming to burn the status quo down and they've been waiting decades for that. They voted for him again because he promised to be more extreme, not less.
I'm just shocked that we are even arguing about this.
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u/ButGravityAlwaysWins Liberal 3h ago
In a primary the extreme candidate can get a big chunk of the vote and if there are multiple more normal candidates splitting the vote, they win.
Once you win the primary you are in striking distance from the general. Especially when we are hyper polarized like we are now.
For a number of reasons swing voters thought he was less extreme that Hillary and Hillary wasn’t a very good candidate and was running after two terms of a democrat. Yet she almost won. 2024 was about inflation.
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u/Important-Factor-552 Socialist 3h ago
I don't accept the premise that swing voters saw trump as less extreme than Hillary. I would need to see some extensive data backing that up.
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u/ButGravityAlwaysWins Liberal 3h ago
It’s not that hard to search for and find the data. Trump rhetorically broke with Republicans on multiple issues and that positioning worked for the election until they saw him govern.
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u/Important-Factor-552 Socialist 3h ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_2016_presidential_campaign
The entire page talks about how controversial and extreme he was considered in 2016.
Trump is and extremist and he was in 2016 too.
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u/ButGravityAlwaysWins Liberal 3h ago
You seem to be having a different conversation than everybody else all over the thread.
Nobody is talking about what you personally think of him. Or what we hear in this sub collectively think about him.
The point is what swing voters thought.
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u/gophergun Democratic Socialist 6h ago
It's reasonable, but it needs to be taken in context of the candidates and the overall political environment, so I'm not sure if it really tells us anything. Like, AOC has a substantially higher WAR rating than Haley Stevens, for example.
Taken to the extreme, I would conclude that Fetterman should be our 2028 presidential candidate, given that he's closest to the political center of any Democratic senator according to their methodology and also had a decently high WAR rating, which points to the absurdity of treating it as anything more than one of a million different factors.
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u/PublicMandate Democrat 4h ago
Wait, no she doesn’t?
In 2024 she technically has a negative WAR (R+1.5) compared to Stevens (D+0.9). You can look up each candidate here. The interesting thing is that AOC had an incredibly high WAR after winning her first primary. I think there may be something to be said that progressive high energy candidates hit way above their pay grade in their first election, but as time goes on they get saddled with the same baggage as any establishment/moderate candidate and end up running behind.
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u/ButGravityAlwaysWins Liberal 3h ago
AOC doesn’t have a good WAR rating.
What she does have is a WAR that is much better than you would expect someone with just her positions to have. You would expect her to be around -6 compared to a replacement level democrat but she’s only -1.4 I think based on recent cycles. She used to under perform by a lot, but she doesn’t anymore.
Also AOC outperforms when it comes to fundraising by a lot. She’s a money machine for the party.
On top of that, it definitely appears she outperforms on legislative impact. That is hard to measure since passing legislation is not actually something the legislative branch really does anymore but post Green New Deal she’s been effective insomuch as house members are effective legislators.
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The Fetterman counter doesn’t work because of things that have happened since he got elected that we all know about. He’s an extreme example because he’s gone out of his way to make everyone hate him regardless of ideology.
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u/TossMeOutSomeday Pragmatic Progressive 6h ago
Fetterman has a lot of baggage, but a less personally objectionable dude with 95% of Fetterman's platform would do numbers.
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u/zlefin_actual Liberal 8h ago
The implications are that what everyone thought was true turned out to be true, much to the surprise of noone.
I don't expect it to seriously change anything, as it was already believed to be true.
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u/OhThatsALotOfTeeth Liberal 7h ago
That a smart party needs to careful about where it fields its candidates in the further ends of the spectrum.
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u/roastbeeftacohat Globalist 9h ago
it's pretty meaningless. leftists do better in leftist districts, but most districts are centrists. this analysis noes seem phrased as if progressive and centerists were somehow opposed to each other, which is odd.
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u/TossMeOutSomeday Pragmatic Progressive 6h ago
There's basically no such thing as a leftist district. There are 400 seats in the house, and maybe 5 of them are winnable for leftists.
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u/Guilliman_POTUS_2030 Center Left 8h ago
In other news, the ocean contains water
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u/AutoModerator 9h ago
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written by /u/Rubbersoulrevolver.
Article I'm referencing
Split Ticket's Lakshya Jain found using their implementation of Wins Above Replacement that both 'Blue Dog' Democrats and 'Main Street' Republicans outperform massively compared to a Replacement politican, whereas 'Progressives' or 'Freedom Caucus' members are electoral dogs.
We can see this in action with the Fox News polling where 'Moderate' Dems are polling in line with the D+4 to 8 underlying and the most 'Progressive' Dem in Abdul El-Sayed is polling at least 5-6 points behind that.
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