Hard lessons for Democrats from 2020
2020 was essentially a max turnout election. We hit all of our numbers. But we were matched, blow for blow, by energized republican voters. There is VERY little evidence of partisan defections or cross-over. We won some, we lost some. But the data shows some dark clouds ahead. Clouds that challenge our conventional wisdom. Clouds that we ignore at our peril.
So… what do we do now?
Albert Einstein was asked what he would do if he had an hour to solve world hunger. He replied by saying “I’d spend 55 minutes defining the problem and five minutes defining the solution.” Focusing on the understanding the problem(s), really understanding them, is one of the best ways to get past our own biases and motivated reasoning. Consider what follows to be the first five minutes of the 55 we need.
One: There are more Republicans than Democrats in Arizona.
While this may seem obvious on the surface, it seems like we are prone to forgetting it. With negative partisanship so strong, people rarely defect from their chosen party these days. Rather than split their ticket, they’re more likely to just undervote in races they don’t care much about or where there isn’t a same-party candidate to vote for. Math is — well — unforgiving.
Two: Democratic policies outperformed Democratic candidates.
Ballot initiatives in Arizona and around the country did significantly better than the people we had running for office. Almost universally. Moderate, progressive, DSA, well- or poorly-funded, incumbent or newcomer — none of these factors broke out. I’m not the only one to notice. This is what is classically called “a brand problem.” We’re Facebook. In short, “it’s not you; it’s me.” If the policies we run on don’t make us at least as popular as when the policies are run without us, that’s a lousy position to be in.
Three: 2020 didn’t look all that much different than 2016 at a precinct level.
Pundits talked a lot about the suburbs, and about suburban women in particular. Despite all of our hard work and tons of progress organizing and mobilizing, the precinct-by-precinct heat map looked very similar to four years ago. Dems hit the gas, and so did the GOP. It was like a drag race of two well-matched cars. Despite the top-line numbers being much larger than 2016 or 2018, the margins at the finish line were similar, along both geographic and demographic lines. What we are doing isn’t changing the calculus.
To put it simply: we didn’t flip the partisan voter ratio, we we weren’t able to persuade or entice bipartisan support based on our policies, and we weren’t able to change the demographic or geographic chemistry of Arizona’s partisan political landscape.
Back to Mr. Einstein.
Albert also said, “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” If I may be so bold, I’ll add that doubling down on the same thing also gets you to the same result, just twice as sweaty. We really need to understand these problems, soup to nuts, before we start jumping to the same canned solutions.