In this debate, you're never going to persuade the pro-turnout people that they're wrong. To win it, you're just going to have to organize the pro-persuasion people and get them to the polls.
After all, there's a huge untapped reservoir of pro-persuasion people who already agree with you. You just need to mobilize them, by emphasizing the most extreme and unpersuasive pro-persuasion lines, and demonizing everyone on the pro-turnout side. That should do the trick.
I would posit that Democrats didn't do very much to persuade Republicans to vote for them. Instead, the Trump-selected candidates were demonstrably awful. Dr. Oz is a charlatan and a resident of NJ. Herschel Walker can't string three sentences together and, oh by the way, had affairs, multiple kids out of marriage and funded abortions. Kari Lake came closest to a normal candidate, but she was all-in on "the election was stolen" silliness, as we can see from her current, meritless lawsuits.
Great article! It is yet another solid analysis and argument for courting swing voters. The 2022 election data provides exceptionally strong evidence against mobilization theory.
Yet it won’t convince the proponents of this theory to abandon it in favor of courting swing voters. This is because they didn’t calculate their way into mobilization theory based on any polling/voting data but instead adopted it as a post hoc justification for why they needn’t abandon their most unpopular policies and messaging. We simply can’t reason people out of ideas that they didn’t reason themselves into in the first place.
In the early 2010s, I wrote a lot for a Democratic polling firm about how data suggested people's partisan preferences were increasingly baked in and Democrats needed to take advantage of the low hanging fruit that people with Democratic leaning characteristics were voting at lower rates by mobilizing them to vote.
I realized I was wrong after 2016 and have tried to atone for my error and I truly don't understand how people can still hang onto the mobilization theory at this point.
Georgia voter here. It's underappreciated how big the difference is between voting for a Senator or Representative, vs state offices. Voting for Brian Kemp doesn't have enormous national implications. Voting for Warnock or Walker does. The stakes are much higher for the Senate race. I, and many Democrats, would vote for a bag of sand if it had a D after it's name. It doesn't matter what experience it has or how qualified it is, if it will caucus and vote with the Democrats, that's all I need. Many Republicans here feel the same way. It doesn't matter if the candidate is problematic, the goal is to have that vote in the Senate. They are just one vote for national issues.
Kemp and other statewide officers in Georgia don't have that same baggage of being tied to the national situation.
>>Democrats won key races by persuading a small but nonzero number of Republicans to vote for them<<
This is what I find so striking. As a proponent of popularism, the conventional wisdom I had absorbed was that there was a limited number of persuadable voters out there. They're not obsessed with politics. They get their news from the big three networks. They're not on Twitter. And so on. Limited, yes, but, that ten or fifteen percent is critically important—and so you've gotta persuade them to vote your way.
But that conventional wisdom (at least per my recollection) also said that nearly all of the rest of the electorate was—even if they're registered Independents—functionally loyal Democrats or Republicans. But it turns out even "loyal" Democrats (or at least Republicans) can sometimes be persuaded otherwise. Fascinating.
I can think of three factors that aggravate the belief on the left that mobilization is the answer:
1. They see that voter turnout, even when elevated, is still below peers in the world, and that untapped reservoir of voting must be able to be tapped in their favor.
2. They saw that turnout did in increase in 2020, not just for Biden but also Trump (the latter of whom oddly got more people to vote for him in his 2020 loss than his 2016 victory) and think that they have to fight fire with fire.
3. Many are still scarred from the Ralph Nader experience of 2000, and fear that if the base left isn't spoken to, a third party challenge from the left will emerge.
Now, I tend to lean toward a more boring, annoying ice cold take of ¿por qué no los dos? when it comes to mobilization and persuasion; I don't think they have to be mutually exclusive. But there's certainly limits in play, and dissonance on strategies that aren't helpful, well, won't help.
Sometimes I get on a partisan high horse and think in general Democrats are smarter and more reasonable than Republicans. But then Stacey Abrams is always there to remind me Democrats also live in their own delusional worldview. Stacey Abrams is a terrible candidate. She's lost two elections, and she famously refused to concede due to unfounded allegations of voter fraud. Yet my entire twitter timeline has somehow convinced itself she's a political superstar. She's not! Can we please, please put this one to bed and let her go write books or whatever.
There is a serious non sequitur here. Swing voters more important than turnout of base: got it, correct. But it does NOT necessarily follow that the reason these “swing” voters sometimes split their ticket or switch sides is because of either the moderate messaging of democratic candidates or their stated policies much less their voting record.
It could be , for instance, that the splitting we saw was mostly negative - punishing bad gop candidates via voting for democrats, and that those democrats moderation was either unnecessary or necessary but insufficient.
Moreover, even if having an effect, It’s also possible that moderation (in brand, perception, or policy position) can have diminishing returns: having established “sanity” would further shifts to the right continually increase the vote share, as MY implies, or would it plateau at some point or even start decreasing total vote share as base turnout starts to be negatively impacted?
I think the problem with mobilization theory is that it disproportionately relies on young people, because that's the biggest group of non-voters you could mobilize. And relying on young people to win an election for you... yeah, I don't know about that.
This is why I get so annoyed at my far-left friends who think that you can increase voter turnout by staging rallies and shouting at innocent passersby through a bullhorn. That’s the opposite of trying to change minds.
I think a big factor behind mobilization theory is social media. When's the last time you convinced someone and they admitted they were wrong on the Internet? For highly engaged and ideological voters, they're talking less with people they know, but strangers online. Persuasion isn't all that effective there, although the likes and shares can be evidence of your arguments merit. Mobilizing seems like a better bet.
From here in North Carolina, one big phenomenon we saw in this election was that the Dem base just didn't really turn out, as it did in many states. Mecklenburg county (Charlotte), a gigantic vote sink that has a non-trivial % of Democratic votes for the entire state, had an abysmal turnout that doomed Beasley. The same was broadly true downballot, as well - ex. young voters had predictably terrible turnout statewide.
So not only did the "base mobilization" strategy not get our candidates over the line, but it failed utterly.
As Matt points out, getting your base to GOTV is essentially a technical question of party apparatus that is related, but sort of separate from, candidate messaging. Base GOTV is nevertheless essential to winning, though, especially in highly inelastic states like North Carolina. But it's a necessary-not-sufficient condition.
This is best the Yglesias article on this topic yet and I think it has the chance at being the most persuasive to reluctant progressives. This is the key bit that I've been waiting for the popularists to say:
"It’s a shitty reality, and I totally understand why folks resist facing up to it. And that’s what makes the mobilization myth so perennially tempting"
This is obviously a "them's the breaks" situation but people don't want to hear that. Just like Trump voters don't want to hear that we aren't importing illegal immigrants so we can give them sex change operations. As Yglesias often says of MAGA types, you have to meet people where they are at. The same goes with persuading progressives to moderate their rhetoric and to be less sanctimonious. Saying "people hate your views, get over it cupcake" isn't going to persuade a progressive and is just going to fire them up and cause them to double down on their rhetoric. These people may be misguided but they have good intentions and have some of the same end goals of better economic outcomes for everyone and and a more free and open society.
David Shor has been trending in this direction as well and I am glad to see Yglesias extend an olive branch. I realize it's just one little blurb, but that little blurb is a big fucking deal to progressives. It communicates that you realize it's hard to moderate your expectations about things your passionate about.
Another way of looking at this is that Democrats won races where the collection of campaigns, PACs, and earned media directly and relentlessly attacked the conservative candidate.
I'm in GA and saw all the ads here. Warnock did a ton of great stuff to make himself look palatable to lots of people (the God stuff in particular helped IMO), but that was coupled with a ton of attack ads against Walker.
I'm not in PA, but the impression I got was that Fetterman did a really good job of not just using social media, but using it to directly attack Oz. I'm also not in OH, but the impression I got was that Ryan did a great job of making himself look likable, serious, and moderate, but it seemed like people were hoping Vance would fall over without ever having to throw a punch.
I'd be interested to hear from people in PA and OH on this.
Winning elections is really important when a leading Presidential candidate has tried to overthrow the U.S. government.
However, I don’t think electoral victories are hugely important under more normal political circumstances.
Many significant policy changes have very little to do with candidates winning elections. Same sex marriage didn’t catch on because Obama won, it caught on through persuading judicial elites to ignore the median voter. Marijuana legalization proceeded through referenda rather than legislation. The Iraq war happened because George W Bush wanted it to, not because pro invasion candidates crushed it in the 2002 midterms.
I’m not convinced individual Congressional elections are ever that important. The Republic survived Storm Thurmond and Jesse Helms polluting the senate for many decades. Indeed, the Thurmond era senate probably functioned better than today’s version.
Nor is it obvious that the Republic would be worse off today if Romney had won in 2012. Romney might have gotten Congress to pass more stimulus, and Trump could never have beaten an incumbent President in a Republican primary. Absent a maniac running for President, its very hard to know what actual effect running a given election will have.
Accordingly, It’s probably more rational for politically active citizens to focus on issue advocacy than electoral strategies.
In this debate, you're never going to persuade the pro-turnout people that they're wrong. To win it, you're just going to have to organize the pro-persuasion people and get them to the polls.
After all, there's a huge untapped reservoir of pro-persuasion people who already agree with you. You just need to mobilize them, by emphasizing the most extreme and unpersuasive pro-persuasion lines, and demonizing everyone on the pro-turnout side. That should do the trick.
I would posit that Democrats didn't do very much to persuade Republicans to vote for them. Instead, the Trump-selected candidates were demonstrably awful. Dr. Oz is a charlatan and a resident of NJ. Herschel Walker can't string three sentences together and, oh by the way, had affairs, multiple kids out of marriage and funded abortions. Kari Lake came closest to a normal candidate, but she was all-in on "the election was stolen" silliness, as we can see from her current, meritless lawsuits.
Great article! It is yet another solid analysis and argument for courting swing voters. The 2022 election data provides exceptionally strong evidence against mobilization theory.
Yet it won’t convince the proponents of this theory to abandon it in favor of courting swing voters. This is because they didn’t calculate their way into mobilization theory based on any polling/voting data but instead adopted it as a post hoc justification for why they needn’t abandon their most unpopular policies and messaging. We simply can’t reason people out of ideas that they didn’t reason themselves into in the first place.
In the early 2010s, I wrote a lot for a Democratic polling firm about how data suggested people's partisan preferences were increasingly baked in and Democrats needed to take advantage of the low hanging fruit that people with Democratic leaning characteristics were voting at lower rates by mobilizing them to vote.
I realized I was wrong after 2016 and have tried to atone for my error and I truly don't understand how people can still hang onto the mobilization theory at this point.
Georgia voter here. It's underappreciated how big the difference is between voting for a Senator or Representative, vs state offices. Voting for Brian Kemp doesn't have enormous national implications. Voting for Warnock or Walker does. The stakes are much higher for the Senate race. I, and many Democrats, would vote for a bag of sand if it had a D after it's name. It doesn't matter what experience it has or how qualified it is, if it will caucus and vote with the Democrats, that's all I need. Many Republicans here feel the same way. It doesn't matter if the candidate is problematic, the goal is to have that vote in the Senate. They are just one vote for national issues.
Kemp and other statewide officers in Georgia don't have that same baggage of being tied to the national situation.
>>Democrats won key races by persuading a small but nonzero number of Republicans to vote for them<<
This is what I find so striking. As a proponent of popularism, the conventional wisdom I had absorbed was that there was a limited number of persuadable voters out there. They're not obsessed with politics. They get their news from the big three networks. They're not on Twitter. And so on. Limited, yes, but, that ten or fifteen percent is critically important—and so you've gotta persuade them to vote your way.
But that conventional wisdom (at least per my recollection) also said that nearly all of the rest of the electorate was—even if they're registered Independents—functionally loyal Democrats or Republicans. But it turns out even "loyal" Democrats (or at least Republicans) can sometimes be persuaded otherwise. Fascinating.
I can think of three factors that aggravate the belief on the left that mobilization is the answer:
1. They see that voter turnout, even when elevated, is still below peers in the world, and that untapped reservoir of voting must be able to be tapped in their favor.
2. They saw that turnout did in increase in 2020, not just for Biden but also Trump (the latter of whom oddly got more people to vote for him in his 2020 loss than his 2016 victory) and think that they have to fight fire with fire.
3. Many are still scarred from the Ralph Nader experience of 2000, and fear that if the base left isn't spoken to, a third party challenge from the left will emerge.
Now, I tend to lean toward a more boring, annoying ice cold take of ¿por qué no los dos? when it comes to mobilization and persuasion; I don't think they have to be mutually exclusive. But there's certainly limits in play, and dissonance on strategies that aren't helpful, well, won't help.
Sometimes I get on a partisan high horse and think in general Democrats are smarter and more reasonable than Republicans. But then Stacey Abrams is always there to remind me Democrats also live in their own delusional worldview. Stacey Abrams is a terrible candidate. She's lost two elections, and she famously refused to concede due to unfounded allegations of voter fraud. Yet my entire twitter timeline has somehow convinced itself she's a political superstar. She's not! Can we please, please put this one to bed and let her go write books or whatever.
There is a serious non sequitur here. Swing voters more important than turnout of base: got it, correct. But it does NOT necessarily follow that the reason these “swing” voters sometimes split their ticket or switch sides is because of either the moderate messaging of democratic candidates or their stated policies much less their voting record.
It could be , for instance, that the splitting we saw was mostly negative - punishing bad gop candidates via voting for democrats, and that those democrats moderation was either unnecessary or necessary but insufficient.
Moreover, even if having an effect, It’s also possible that moderation (in brand, perception, or policy position) can have diminishing returns: having established “sanity” would further shifts to the right continually increase the vote share, as MY implies, or would it plateau at some point or even start decreasing total vote share as base turnout starts to be negatively impacted?
I think the problem with mobilization theory is that it disproportionately relies on young people, because that's the biggest group of non-voters you could mobilize. And relying on young people to win an election for you... yeah, I don't know about that.
This is why I get so annoyed at my far-left friends who think that you can increase voter turnout by staging rallies and shouting at innocent passersby through a bullhorn. That’s the opposite of trying to change minds.
I think a big factor behind mobilization theory is social media. When's the last time you convinced someone and they admitted they were wrong on the Internet? For highly engaged and ideological voters, they're talking less with people they know, but strangers online. Persuasion isn't all that effective there, although the likes and shares can be evidence of your arguments merit. Mobilizing seems like a better bet.
Terrific piece, per usual.
From here in North Carolina, one big phenomenon we saw in this election was that the Dem base just didn't really turn out, as it did in many states. Mecklenburg county (Charlotte), a gigantic vote sink that has a non-trivial % of Democratic votes for the entire state, had an abysmal turnout that doomed Beasley. The same was broadly true downballot, as well - ex. young voters had predictably terrible turnout statewide.
So not only did the "base mobilization" strategy not get our candidates over the line, but it failed utterly.
As Matt points out, getting your base to GOTV is essentially a technical question of party apparatus that is related, but sort of separate from, candidate messaging. Base GOTV is nevertheless essential to winning, though, especially in highly inelastic states like North Carolina. But it's a necessary-not-sufficient condition.
This is best the Yglesias article on this topic yet and I think it has the chance at being the most persuasive to reluctant progressives. This is the key bit that I've been waiting for the popularists to say:
"It’s a shitty reality, and I totally understand why folks resist facing up to it. And that’s what makes the mobilization myth so perennially tempting"
This is obviously a "them's the breaks" situation but people don't want to hear that. Just like Trump voters don't want to hear that we aren't importing illegal immigrants so we can give them sex change operations. As Yglesias often says of MAGA types, you have to meet people where they are at. The same goes with persuading progressives to moderate their rhetoric and to be less sanctimonious. Saying "people hate your views, get over it cupcake" isn't going to persuade a progressive and is just going to fire them up and cause them to double down on their rhetoric. These people may be misguided but they have good intentions and have some of the same end goals of better economic outcomes for everyone and and a more free and open society.
David Shor has been trending in this direction as well and I am glad to see Yglesias extend an olive branch. I realize it's just one little blurb, but that little blurb is a big fucking deal to progressives. It communicates that you realize it's hard to moderate your expectations about things your passionate about.
Bravo!
Another way of looking at this is that Democrats won races where the collection of campaigns, PACs, and earned media directly and relentlessly attacked the conservative candidate.
I'm in GA and saw all the ads here. Warnock did a ton of great stuff to make himself look palatable to lots of people (the God stuff in particular helped IMO), but that was coupled with a ton of attack ads against Walker.
I'm not in PA, but the impression I got was that Fetterman did a really good job of not just using social media, but using it to directly attack Oz. I'm also not in OH, but the impression I got was that Ryan did a great job of making himself look likable, serious, and moderate, but it seemed like people were hoping Vance would fall over without ever having to throw a punch.
I'd be interested to hear from people in PA and OH on this.
Winning elections is really important when a leading Presidential candidate has tried to overthrow the U.S. government.
However, I don’t think electoral victories are hugely important under more normal political circumstances.
Many significant policy changes have very little to do with candidates winning elections. Same sex marriage didn’t catch on because Obama won, it caught on through persuading judicial elites to ignore the median voter. Marijuana legalization proceeded through referenda rather than legislation. The Iraq war happened because George W Bush wanted it to, not because pro invasion candidates crushed it in the 2002 midterms.
I’m not convinced individual Congressional elections are ever that important. The Republic survived Storm Thurmond and Jesse Helms polluting the senate for many decades. Indeed, the Thurmond era senate probably functioned better than today’s version.
Nor is it obvious that the Republic would be worse off today if Romney had won in 2012. Romney might have gotten Congress to pass more stimulus, and Trump could never have beaten an incumbent President in a Republican primary. Absent a maniac running for President, its very hard to know what actual effect running a given election will have.
Accordingly, It’s probably more rational for politically active citizens to focus on issue advocacy than electoral strategies.