A new analysis found that liberal candidates were responsible for costing Democrats votes in key 2020 House races.
The study from the Third Way, a moderate Democrat think tank, was detailed in a Thursday report by The News & Observer.
The data shows that the moderate Democrats came closer to matching President Joe Biden’s performance in swing districts while progressives fell much further behind, the newspaper said.
And with Republican gains in the House, it appears to confirm what Republicans have been saying about Democrats becoming even more liberal.
“Republicans were calling everyone a socialist,” Matt Bennett, Third Way’s co-founder is quoted by the newspaper. “They were using the same attacks everywhere. But it stuck in places where it was closer to the truth for some than others.”
And the analysis noted: “…the data is clear that moderate non-incumbent House Democratic candidates fared much better than their leftwing counterparts — by a significant margin.
“In fact, leftwing nominees lost more than double the amount of support than moderate Democrats on average compared to Biden, due to some combination of ticket-splitting and under-voting.”
The analysis noted Biden defeated Donald Trump 51.3% to 46.9%. But House Democrats defeated House Republicans 50.8% to 47.7%
The analysis defined leftwing candidates as those endorsed by at least one of the following organizations: Our Revolution, Justice Democrats, or Brand New Congress.
It noted Biden won these districts 50.7% to 47.6% on average. The leftwing House Democrat candidates lost in these districts by an average of a 47% to 50.9% margin..
And the analysis said: “These districts spanned from safe Democratic to competitive to safe Republican, so it is also worthwhile to look at them in categories.
“Of these 11 candidates, three were in safe Democratic districts where two of the three actually outran Biden: Marie Newman in IL03 and Mondaire Jones in NY17. These were the only two leftwing candidates to outrun the top of the ticket, which unfortunately did nothing to build a Democratic majority as they were already safe Blue districts.”
It pointed out that while non-incumbent leftwing Democrats underperformed Biden’s margin by nearly 10 points on average, non-incumbent moderate Democrat candidates only underperformed Biden’s margin by four.
David de la Fuente, who authored the analysis for the Third Way, told the News & Observer that in safe Democrat districts, the more progressive candidates generally do as well as their moderate counterparts.
And the newspaper noted that Third Way officials are conducting a post-election research project that will be released in the coming months.
Bennett argued that the data makes clear that Democrats running in next year’s elections should align with Biden because of his relative popularity.
“Our view is if low propensity voters didn’t show up with Donald Trump on the ticket given the impact of negative partisanship, they’re definitely not going to show up for someone they’ve never heard of in a midterm election,” Bennett said.
Source: Newmax
