Nate Cohn and Kevin Quealy

<h1>(The Upshot): The first six months of the Democratic primary have brought only one deep change: Pete Buttigieg has emerged as a well-known contender.</h1>

Everything else has been a modest shifting in support and positioning — nothing that has fundamentally altered the trajectory of a very long race.

It might not feel that way if you have followed every twist and turn. It can be easy to get caught up in the latest news and polls. At times, a surging candidate might feel unstoppable; a slumping candidate might seem doomed.

But up to this point, most of the seemingly big shifts in the race have actually been fairly small. Most candidates have seen their support bob up and down in a narrow range of a few percentage points, including the polling leader, Joe Biden, often in a predictable surge-and-decline pattern after their decisions to run for president.

None of the candidates in the middle of the pack have moved up to challenge Biden’s status as the front-runner. In fact, none of the candidates who started with less than 15% of the vote in an average of polls have, at any time, breached 15% in the poll averages.

Of the dozen or so candidates who started the year with little name recognition, only Buttigieg, the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has become significantly better known to voters. In early February, 33% of registered Democrats said they had heard of him, according to Morning Consult’s daily tracking survey. This month, that number reached 73%.

Of course, just because big changes haven’t happened yet doesn’t mean they can’t. An important and decisive move could come any time, perhaps as soon as the first Democratic debates Wednesday and Thursday.

In recent cycles, the debates have been enough to bring more attention to some candidates and put them into contention. That was the case in 2012, for instance, for Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich. A few candidates, like Rick Perry or Scott Walker, stumbled in the debates and never recovered.

But more often, the debates have a far more modest effect, and it is important to have some perspective. A shift in support is likely to be fleeting, not a lasting change in the race.

You might feel that many candidates this cycle have already faltered, even if not as dramatically as Perry did with his “oops” moment. Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas or Sen. Kamala Harris of California, for instance, enjoyed initial success but have slipped back in the polls.

But sometimes even those who fall into a steep decline can recover, like John McCain in 2008. O’Rourke and Harris still possess the traits that made them intriguing to Democrats and could easily claw back, for example.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has already done something like what Harris and O’Rourke might hope to do. She struggled early on, in part because of questions about her electability and the way she handled a DNA test on her claim to Native American heritage. But she has since recovered, and more, going on to deliver a steady stream of policy proposals.

If Warren winds up advancing to the nomination, perhaps we’ll remember it the way we remember Donald Trump’s rise in 2016 or Barack Obama’s in 2008.

But for now, she is at just about 12% in an average of national polls — about the same support she had shortly after her announcement, a few points behind Bernie Sanders today and a few points higher than Buttigieg or O’Rourke at their peaks. Her level of support is less than what Walker had heading into the first Republican debate; he was out of the race less than two months later.

She and other leading candidates may have the spotlight now, but a lesser-known candidate could succeed in prying it away from them in the debates this week, joining Buttigieg in becoming a more familiar face to Americans.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/25/upshot/2020-democrats-buttigieg-name-known.html" link="null" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.

Biggest Change in Race in 6 Months: A Name (Buttigieg) Is Now Known

Everything else has been a modest shifting in support and positioning — nothing that has fundamentally altered the trajectory of a very long race.

Biggest change in race in 6 months: A name (Buttigieg) is now known

He was pummeled on social media after the revelation, and virtually every Democratic presidential candidate demanded his resignation.

Yet the majority of ordinary Democrats in Virginia said Northam should remain in office, according to a Washington Post/Schar School poll a week later. And black Democrats were likelier than white ones to say Northam should remain.

Today’s Democratic Party is increasingly perceived as dominated by its “woke” left wing. But the views of Democrats on social media often bear little resemblance to those of the wider Democratic electorate.

The outspoken group of Democratic-leaning voters on social media is outnumbered, roughly 2-to-1, by the more moderate, more diverse and less educated group of Democrats who typically don’t post political content online, according to data from the Hidden Tribes Project. This latter group has the numbers to decide the Democratic presidential nomination in favor of a relatively moderate establishment favorite, as it has often done in the past.

A majority of Democrats who don’t share their political views on social media consider themselves moderates or conservatives, compared with 29 percent of those who do post political content online. In the less outspoken group, a majority of Democrats say they don’t follow the news much, and 70 percent say that political correctness is a problem. Just 11 percent of Democrats who post political content are African American, well below the 24 percent who do not.

Even these results might understate the leftward lean of the most politically active Democratic Twitter users, who often engage with political journalists and can have a powerful effect in shaping the conventional wisdom. In an informal poll of Democrats on one of our Twitter accounts Monday, about 80 percent said they were liberal, and a similar percentage said they had a college degree. Only 20 percent said political correctness was a problem, and only 2 percent said they were black.

The relative moderation of Democrats as a whole makes it less surprising that Virginia Democrats tolerated Northam’s yearbook page. It makes it easier to imagine how Joe Biden might not merely survive questions about whether he touched women in ways that made them feel uncomfortable but might even emerge essentially unscathed.

It also helps explain why recent polls show that a majority of Democrats would rather see the party become more moderate than move leftward, even as progressives clamor for a Green New Deal or “Medicare for All.”

The Hidden Tribes Project, conducted by More in Common, is a representative YouGov survey of 8,000 Americans that divided respondents into different groups, or “tribes,” based on their responses to dozens of questions. The characteristics of these groups help make sense of the different ways Democrats have run and won primary elections.

In reality, the Democratic electorate is both ideologically and demographically diverse. Overall, around half of Democratic-leaning voters consider themselves “moderate” or “conservative,” not liberal. Around 40 percent are not white.

Roughly a quarter of Democrats count as ideologically consistent progressives, who toe the party line or something further to the left on just about every issue. Only a portion of them, perhaps 1 in 10 Democrats overall, might identify as democratic socialists, based on recent polls.

Traditional liberals — another relatively white, well-educated bloc of Democrats — are also overrepresented on social media. They’re united with the progressive activists on the issues that divide Republicans and Democrats. They split on whether American society is fundamentally and unacceptably unjust, with liberals optimistic about compromise and satisfied with a cautious approach, and progressives demanding bolder action to redress injustice in society.

The candidates of the progressive left, whether Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, speak with moral clarity. The strongest traditional liberal candidates, despite their pragmatic streak, speak with hopeful idealism, stemming from their relatively optimistic view of the country’s capacity to compromise, reform and change. Barack Obama took that tack in 2008, and Beto O’Rourke and Cory Booker might hope to in 2020.

In recent decades, most of the candidates who have found their core strength among the party’s ideologically consistent, left-liberal activist base have lost. Gary Hart, Jerry Brown, Jesse Jackson, Howard Dean and Sanders all fell short against candidates of the party’s establishment, like Walter Mondale, Al Gore and Hillary Clinton. The establishment candidates won the nomination by counting on the rest of the party’s voters.

The rest of the party is easy to miss. Not only is it less active on social media, but it is also underrepresented in the well-educated, urban enclaves where journalists roam. It is underrepresented in the Northern blue states and districts where most Democratic politicians win elections.

Many in this group are party stalwarts: people who are Democrats because of identity and self-interest — a union worker, an African-American — more than their policy views. Their votes are concentrated in the South, where Democratic politicians rarely win.

Nonwhite voters, particularly black voters, are a major driver of this geographic split. Black voters represent around 20 percent of the Democratic electorate nationwide and a majority of Democrats in the Deep South. Obama’s strength among black voters allowed him to defeat the establishment favorite candidate (Clinton) in 2008, in contrast with prior progressive candidates.

The rest of the party poses a challenge for more progressive candidates, and it’s not just about this group’s moderate views.

Less engaged and less ideological voters tend to be cynical about politics. One might think cynicism would translate to support for outsider candidates, and it probably could against an establishment favorite with enough flaws. Instead, it has more often meant skepticism of ambitious, idealistic, pie-in-the-sky liberals and progressives who offer big promises with no record. It has meant an appreciation for well-known, battle-tested politicians who have been on their side or even delivered in the past. This election cycle, Biden might be the beneficiary of such sentiment.

This group’s lower levels of news consumption mean fewer opportunities for the activist-backed candidates to make their case. A majority of such voters might not even have an opinion about Ocasio-Cortez (overall, only around half of Democrats do in recent polls). Their weaker ideological predilections mean these voters are often less likely to buy the message, even if it reaches them.

Of course, the Democratic Party has moved to the left in recent years. It has moved far enough left that there’s plenty of room for a progressive candidate to win the nomination. It would be a mistake to dismiss Sanders’ chances of winning the nomination just because white progressives have generally fallen short in the past. The name recognition he earned in 2016 will be an asset that prior outsider candidates haven’t been able to count on, and so will his impressive small-donor fundraising.

But it would also be a mistake to assume that outrage on social media means outrage throughout the broader electorate. And it would be a mistake to assume that more moderate Democrats are out of step with the party’s electorate.

This article originally appeared in <a id="f7c12f4d-ddab-4483-b228-28c00954c7ea" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/09/upshot/10up-electorate.html">The New York Times</a>.

Liberals tilt left online, belying a quiet majority

Perhaps the most telling poll of the Democratic primary season hasn’t been about the Democratic primary at all but about the fallout from an old racist photo on the yearbook page of Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia.

The relative moderation of Democrats who are not sharing their political thoughts on social media, and therefore of Democrats as a whole, makes it less surprising that Virginia Democrats tolerated Northam’s yearbook page. It makes it easier to imagine how Joe Biden might not merely survive questions about whether he touched women in ways that made them feel uncomfortable but might even emerge essentially unscathed.

The Hidden Tribes Project, conducted by More in Common, is a nonpartisan representative YouGov survey of 8,000 Americans that divided respondents into different groups, or “tribes,” based on their responses to dozens of questions. The characteristics of these groups help make sense of the different ways Democrats have run and won primary elections.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/09/upshot/10up-electorate.html" id="0157fed3-6ce6-3f40-ab25-c09ee0b8b474">The New York Times</a>.

Perhaps the most telling poll of the Democratic primary season hasn’t been about the Democratic primary at all but about the fallout from a 35-year-old racist photo on a yearbook page. Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia was pummeled on social media after the revelation, and virtually every Democratic presidential candidate demanded his resignation.

The Democratic Electorate on Twitter Is Not the Actual Democratic Electorate

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Nate Cohn and Kevin Quealy

Articles written by the author

Biggest change in race in 6 months: A name (Buttigieg) is now known

Liberals tilt left online, belying a quiet majority

The Democratic Electorate on Twitter Is Not the Actual Democratic Electorate