(Above – “Where’d you get this poll?”)
“Top Democrats are circulating a poll showing that one of the House’s most progressive members — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — has become a definitional face for the party with a crucial group of swing voters.
Why it matters: These Democrats are sounding the alarm that swing voters know and dislike socialism, warning it could cost them the House and the presidency. The poll is making the rounds of some of the most influential Democrats in America.
- “If all voters hear about is AOC, it could put the [House] majority at risk,” said a top Democrat who is involved in 2020 congressional races. “[S]he’s getting all the news and defining everyone else’s races.”
The poll — taken in May, before Speaker Pelosi’s latest run-in with AOC and the three other liberal House freshmen known as “The Squad” — included 1,003 likely general-election voters who are white and have two years or less of college education.
- These are the “white, non-college voters” who embraced Donald Trump in 2016 but are needed by Democrats in swing House districts.”
I haven’t seen the full demographic/location breakdown of that internal Dem poll, but it apparently only polled white non-college voters – who have been going GOP by 15+ points for the past decade.
Not sure why they’re called “swing voters” by whoever leaked the poll to @Axios. pic.twitter.com/Yp7qO1G1Bd
— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) July 15, 2019
AOC
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I love the anonymous sources. Not. (I’m sure these are people backing Biden. Probably not Bernie, even though he is an older white guy.)
And if “the Squad” is backing something, I’m going to look at it more favorably. (FWIW, I’m an older white non-college-graduate.)
I’m an older, white, female, college grad and I definitely support ‘the Squad’. 🙂
Well, the DNC read folks who work with campaigns the riot act a couple of months ago.
I’m thinkin’ Pelosi and Hoyer.
I can see Hoyer doing it. He may want that top spot in the House, and he doesn’t like competition.
Don’t put it past Bernie if it’ll help him. It’s just that it doesn’t in this case.
Bernie demonstrates that you can push a lot of the same policies…and let’s not say he doesn’t do so fervently, lol…and win a much higher favorability rating than AOC manages. Let’s look…
Bernie is polling 39/44 in the most recent Economist poll, or -5 net favorable, compared to -13 for AOC in a somewhat recent Q poll. (Sheesh…that’s a tough pool…he usually scores higher.) He’s -6 amongst indies, compared to -18 for her.
He holds up his favorables no matter what he’s doing, I’ll give him that.
(Interesting side note: in Bernie’s numbers, it’s interesting to me that he gets higher favorability from 2016 Clinton voters than from all registered Democrats. It kind of calls to question the idea that her voters don’t like him. They consistently give him really high favorables.)
Another factor to put into the math: Bernie’s been around longer and AOC just showed up to the party. And only the former is running for President while the latter is in a safe Dem district, so who cares?
The big picture I’m pointing to is that it doesn’t matter who we look at on the left – long-time politicians, freshmen, progressive, moderate, Reps, Senators – most everyone polls significantly higher than AOC.
As a progressive, I care. Because we can’t have someone who polls terrible carry the banner for the agenda. And when someone like Warren is moving the needle on our policies toward accepted, it’s not helpful to have an unpopular politician moving it back.
I personally like Rep. Ocasio-Cortez. She’s bright, enthusiastic, and dedicated. She’s at the beginning of her political career…she should protect the longevity of it. I don’t think it’s her stances precisely…I suspect it’s how she expresses them. I think the constant Twitter plays a role in her numbers. But whatever it is, if she wants to wield the sort of power required to enact real change, she needs to get her numbers up.
AOC kind of had that role of “leadership” thrust upon her by the first politician to know how to use Twitter in a way that actually doesn’t embarrass people on a regular basis. You can thank the GOP fools misreading the room in terms of handing her more power than any freshman congressperson usually has. Also, nobody ever got to be a leader by doing the cautious approach. I doubt she’ll ever be the bombthrower Bernie or Trump is but it strikes me that her stances will always mean more than her numbers.
What was the poll question? Because Bernie isn’t in the House, and AOC isn’t running for president.
This poll was posted on DK a few days ago and I called Bullshit then.
And I’m calling bullshit now for a variety of reasons.
It’s probably good data. I say that because it lines up with other polling on Rep Ocasio-Cortez…polls where we do have sources and better cross-tab data. I don’t know that it’s meaningful, but it’s probably good data.
In March, Quinnipiac polled her favorability at 23/36 for a -13 favorability. She polled -35 favorable amongst whites with no college degree, so that lines up with this survey.
There’s good and bad news in this data. On a positive note, a lot of Dems and indies are uncertain – about 40% of either group have no opinion. But only 20% of Republicans are uncertain, and they’re massively opposed to her, so their higher participation pulls her numbers down a little. Not a lot, but some. The bad news is that her numbers just flat out suck amongst independent voters. In every survey for months. The Q poll has her at -18.
There’s not a lot of national polls for House Dems. But several are running for President, and we have polls on them. Delaney…Gabbard… Ryan…Swalwell…Beto…and from the Senate Booker, Gillibrand, Sanders, Harris, Warren. A wide range of candidates with varying poll results, but AOC is well behind them all in net favorability and favorability with indies.
There are a couple of ways I look at this data. On the one hand, she represents a district, and national numbers aren’t that important for her. She’s out fighting the fight, and like Nancy Pelosi she’s seeing bad numbers as a result. On the other, her numbers are just bad. She polls right with Donald Trump. She’s below every Congressional Dem I can find polling data on. We’re living in Fantasyland if we don’t think this is notable.
Politicians are responsible for making their policies and their candidacies popular. Her numbers might not be fair or justified, but that’s kinda irrelevant – she needs to get them up. It’s hard to see how she can be helpful passing the progressive agenda if her numbers are this bad. It’s hard to lead a populist revolution if you aren’t popular.
AOC, in my feeble old brain stands out as a new, articulate voice in the Democratic barn where all the Donkeys hang out … she shows resilience and fight when attacked personally by DJT, she is applied to various projects as a fact finder, chasing down Senator’s hiding from their offices, neat things like that … ALSO she has a vote in the House to help culminate in offsets to the Republicans BS …
She’s still too young to be considered as a presidential contender, BUT, that does NOT mean she should be judged for stating her opinions and, yes, at her age she is equipped with a lot more energy than a lot of the old white Republicans, and myself from the other side of the aisle ….
I’m willing to give her the time to settle into the mainstream flow, (however slow and draconian it has become, a little ways at least), those old war horses are acting like spoiled children who voice loud opinions because her energy for now, scares them to the point of comparing her to those that hold higher offices, or other in-house groups of nay-Sayers … she and other gals are faced with direct and horrible attacks from the dead-from-the-neck-up supposed POTUS, who is obviously threatened by the fire in her eyes, when she attacks about the lizard’s non-helping in PR, etc.,.
I say, let her and her new friends make the asshole in the WH sweat, it will help exacerbate Trump’s palpitations of fear …. 🙂
She’s not in the presidential race yet, but her gains of experience in the House will make her a force to be contended with by the Republicans going foreword …
DNC is doing everything it can to protect corporate America such as the entire healthcare industry from Bernie. Even favoring the Republican lite Biden.
Does anyone remember who made the rules on pre-existing conditions before Obamacare? That’s right it was the private healthcare corporations. Why does the DNC want to protect them? I bet it has something to do with money. They are feeding the lie that single payer healthcare will turn the U.S. into a Socialist country like Venezuela. It’s a damn shame on the DNC.
“They are feeding the lie that single payer healthcare will turn the U.S. into a Socialist country like Venezuela”
Venezuela is not a Socialist country. It is a dictatorial country. The word for this presidential run is Socialism. It connotes a time of the post
WWII era of the Cold War. The Repugs. are now constantly drumming this word into the national consciousness in a very negative way, and it seems to be working as many people are using it but with the definition.
Bernie Sanders identifies himself as a Socialist Democrat. AOC views of what a government should be and do for a nation aligns better with the definition of Social Democracy.
From Quora.com:
“The United Nations published in 2018 a global report ranking the happiest countries in the world. The top five, in order, were (1) Finland, (2) Norway, (3) Denmark, (4) Iceland and (5) Switzerland.”
All of these nations are social democracies. All rank higher than the US in services to its citizens.
McConnel in saving face for the resident of the WH today mentioned socialism and no one corrected him. The news (all outlets) have also accepted this definition of Socialism as prima facie.
The funny (or oxy moronic) thing is that Social Democracy is more aligned with the historical US notion of Democracy than the current notion of corporate America democracy resembling a quasi China capitalism.