Myth No. 5
Democratic voters are still ideologically divided.
The Democratic Party is supposedly riven between Sanders-like progressives and Clintonian centrists. Sanders supporters wanted “the Democrats to be a different kind of party: a more ideological, more left-wing one,” Matt Yglesias wrote in Vox in April 2016. New York Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall called Clinton’s supporters “the centrist wing.”
Yes, Sanders supporters were more likely to describe themselves as “liberal,” but the cleavages in the Democratic electorate were not really about ideology. In the surveys we examined, there were few differences on key policy questions like the role of government in providing health care or child care. No wonder nearly 80 percent of Sanders voters became Clinton supporters in the general election — more than the share of Clinton voters who ended up backing Obama after the 2008 primary contest.
That’s not to say there are zero divides within the Democratic electorate, but they are often not the usual suspects. During the primaries, the real gaps were linked to party, race and age: Clinton supporters were more likely to be registered Democrats, nonwhite and older. During the general election, the fault lines that mattered involved, once again, race and immigration, not economic policy. We find that in 2012, a substantial fraction of Obama voters had conservative views about race and immigration. Roughly a third said it should be harder to immigrate to the United States. It was these voters who were more likely to shift to Trump in 2016.
Still, the party’s divides appear to be diminishing. The fraction of Democrats with more-conservative immigration views is rapidly shrinking — probably in reaction to the Trump presidency. In the end, the party remains fundamentally united on many key policy issues.
The Washington Post
John Sides is a professor of political science at George Washington University. Michael Tesler is an associate professor of political science at University of California at Irvine. Lynn Vavreck is chair of American politics and public policy at UCLA.