How frontline Democrats talk to swing voters

It's all about persuasion

Campaigns are about answering two questions: What do voters care about, and how do you win their support?

The answers depend on which political strategist, pundit, or activist you ask, but broadly speaking, two philosophical camps have emerged. There are those who believe you must persuade undecided likely voters to support your candidate by focusing on their preferred issues. And there are those who believe you need to mobilize certain voters who are not likely to vote, generally by promoting a sweeping policy vision for the country.

A lot of internet ink has been spilled in the war of Mobilization versus Persuasion. But one way of cutting through the debate is by looking at the candidates who need the right answer the most — incumbents who are running tight re-election campaigns.

Today, I’m looking at incumbent Democrats and the types of messages they’re using to try to keep their jobs. Team Mobilization makes the case that these candidates should lean into bold policy promises, like tuition-free public college and a Green New Deal, to turn out a new coalition of voters. Or, as Bernie Sanders lays out in his recent somewhat facetiously titled opinion piece, “The ‘far-left agenda’ is exactly what most Americans want.” But is that exactly what most Americans want? I think these incumbent swing race Democrats probably have a good idea. So, let’s dive into their campaign messaging and find out what they have to say.

The obvious messages

There are 24 Democratic incumbents running this cycle in races that the Cook Political Report defines as either “toss-up” or “leans Democrat.” Nineteen are in the House, and five are in the Senate.

I watched all their TV and digital ads, and I read all their website policy sections, but to get a better handle on the most common keywords and phrases, I plugged the language from their ads into a word cloud generator. If the candidate only had one or no ads at all, I grabbed language from the top issues section on their website to make up the difference. Admittedly, my methodology probably wouldn’t qualify this article for a top-tier political science journal, but it does give us a general sense of what messages these candidates are focusing on.

The main takeaway? It’s still the economy, stupid.

Abortion rights, border security, and supporting veterans are undeniably core themes, but the ultimate focus is on the cost of living. What’s particularly interesting is how incumbents are emphasizing their healthcare policies as a solution to economic issues, positioning their work on capping prescription drug prices and defending Medicare as key to addressing the broader cost of living crisis. There's been plenty of discussion about 2024 being the year “democracy is on the ballot,” but listening to these candidates, it sounds more like 2024 is the year affordable insulin is on the ballot.

It’s a strategically sound move. As Matt wrote back in October, Democrats really should talk more about healthcare, because they have a superior policy agenda and they command far more trust from voters on this issue. The reality is that these incumbents governed during a period of high inflation, and policies aimed at lowering prescription drug prices are one of the most concrete cost-saving policies they can point to.

Of course, incumbents can’t win on healthcare alone. These candidates are also looking to persuade voters by playing the economic populist hits: price-gouging and corporate greed. Here are some examples of that healthcare and populist economic messaging in action:

• Representative Matt Cartwright represents a suburban and rural district in Pennsylvania that has voted for Trump twice. And he’s running an ad that says, “People are hurting. That's why I fought to cap insulin at $35, along with out-of-pocket drug costs for seniors. I'll fight and take on Wall Street and the greedy corporations that gouge us.”

• Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez represents a predominately rural district in Washington that has also voted twice for Trump. She has a message calling out corporations for having too much control over American lives.

• Nevada Senator Jacky Rosen’s campaign is running an ad that plays news soundbites saying, “She took on the big drug companies and won. Senator Jacky Rosen today announced a cap on out-of-pocket prescription drug costs. Giving Medicare the power to negotiate lower prices.”

So is this persuasion or mobilization? Swing voters can be weird, and they often hold a variety of idiosyncratic views that don’t align with the traditional left-right divide. But overall, they identify as moderate or conservative far more often than liberal. And the fact of the matter is that none of these candidates are proposing left policies that will dramatically restructure the US economy. Capping prescription drug costs, protecting abortion rights, and even the more left-leaning rhetoric about corporations, are all forms of popularism — the idea that the best way to win elections is by focusing on the policies that poll best. At its core, that is a strategy that is aimed at persuading moderate or even Republican voters, rather than mobilizing a hard-left coalition.

Popularism is a campaign’s best main ingredient, but it still needs a bit of seasoning. As we saw with the Biden/Harris swap, a candidate can gain more support by simply being more energetic and charismatic, while still keeping the same substantive policies. So it’s important to recognize that a lot of these candidates’ messaging focuses on their background and persona. When NBC Politics sorta scooped me on this piece earlier this week by comparing ads that ran in 40 Republican and Democratic House races, they found that candidate “biography” was the top overall message.

Republicans can be good, sometimes?

It’s worth discussing how these incumbent Democrats are treating the opposition. On issues like abortion, Social Security, and Medicare, their Republican opponents are often cast as the villain. A great example is an ad from Montana Senator Jon Tester, in which voters who support Tester emphasize his opponent’s stances against abortion rights and in favor of Medicare privatization.

However, when they discuss Republicans as a party, the connotation is much more positive. The GOP, and even sometimes Donald Trump’s candidacy, isn’t cast as an apocalyptic threat to the world order, and the fate of our democracy isn’t teetering in the balance. In fact, working with Republicans is generally considered a virtuous act that voters should know about. This is especially the case when it comes to issues on the border. While these incumbents do not traffic in extremist rhetoric around mass deportations, they do leverage their collaboration with Republicans on issues around border security:

• Colorado Representative Yadira Caraveo is the incumbent in a district that votes virtually identically with the national electorate and is nearly 40 percent Hispanic. She highlights how “she broke with party leaders to support tougher penalties for fentanyl-related offenses, worked with Republicans to pass a law that funded 22,000 border patrol agents, and spearheaded bipartisan bills to crack down on cartels, combat human trafficking, and provide a path to citizenship for law-abiding immigrants.”

• In order to win PA-07, a district that has voted for the presidential winner in the past four elections, Representative Susan Wild deployed a Republican surrogate to say she’s “bipartisan and independent.”

• Jared Golden goes even further in Maine’s rural second district. He’s got an ad that says, “Now I'm fighting against Biden's electric car mandate while voting to increase domestic oil and gas production” and “working with Republicans to secure the border and standing with law enforcement against defunding the police."

I found several candidates who used Republican surrogates in their ads; that’s persuasion in its purest form, because it means their path to victory must include the support of voters who may also vote for Trump. While this probably isn’t something these campaigns would readily admit to, they seem to assume they can take the Democratic base for granted. Appeasing more people on the left isn’t worth the risk of losing persuadable independents or Republicans.

What these candidates aren’t talking about

While it’s important to understand what these incumbents are saying in their ads, it’s arguably just as important to discuss what they aren’t saying, and why. Student loan forgiveness, democracy, and the Biden administration’s two-trillion-dollar initiative to address climate change are all topics that didn’t receive enough mentions to qualify for the word cloud. Even the (popular) bipartisan infrastructure bill is rarely mentioned.

A lot of these candidates are functionally moderate, so it makes sense that some of these topics don’t feature in their messaging. However, other candidates actually are further left on certain issues, it just isn’t highlighted in their ads. For example, Matt Cartwright, the Pennsylvania representative I discussed above, is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and has previously voiced support for Medicare For All. But you wouldn’t know it by watching his paid media. His healthcare policy plan is focused on reproductive rights and capping out-of-pocket drug costs for seniors. He’s proud of the fact that he “introduced more bills with Democratic and Republican support than any other House Democrat.”

Sherrod Brown is another interesting example. Just two years ago, he was one of the leaders of the call for President Biden to cancel student debt. As a red state Democratic Senator, his voice on the issue carried extra weight. Now, his 2024 re-election campaign is in full swing and he hasn’t mentioned that victory in any of his television ads. Similarly, a few years ago, Brown spoke favorably about the Green New Deal and supported Biden’s pause on LNG exports. But recently he’s broken with Democrats on EV policy and energy efficiency regulations, leading Politico to run an article titled, “A new Sherrod Brown? Democrat runs from climate agenda.”

A cynic might call this flip-flopping, but a political realist would say this is more of a strategic deemphasis, an understanding that the majority of the voters Brown needs to win did not benefit from student loan forgiveness and are not in favor of a rapid transition to renewable energy. Brown has a long history of backing progressive causes, but here he is reckoning with the political reality that it is more advantageous to persuade Ohio swing voters than to mobilize Ohio progressives.

Will it be enough to win on Election Day? We’ll find out in a few months. How are Republicans responding? We’ll find out next week, when we dive into the messages they’re using in their ad campaigns.