More Than Ever, Dems Need Progressive Independents to Win – Two Perspectives

Based on two different graphics about voter preferences, one for party and one for progressive vs conservative, Dems will win only if they inspire the progressive base and progressive independents to vote.

According to results of the above Gallup poll, if only the Democratic base voted, Dem candidates would get no more than 29% of the nation’s votes. If only the Republican base voted, then Rep candidates would get no more than 26% of the nation’s votes.

In other words, both parties need the independent voters, who represent 45% of the nation’s voters, to win any elections and/or for their opponents supporters to stay home on election day. Some of those independents are truly independent and vote for a third-party, but most will lean either Repub or Dem/conservative or progressive.

Assuming negligible votes for third parties, then Dems need at least 22% of these independents to win. That gives Dems 51% and Reps 49%. That leaves 23% of the independents for the Repugs/conservatives and they need 25% of independents to win.

Now take a look at the New American Majority pie chart above to see what that winning 51% for Dems is composed of – progressive whites and progressive people of color. This chart is from Steve Phillips’ book titled Brown Is The New White, in which he and his team analyzed the Citizen Voting Age Population (CVAP) data from the Census bureau and a detailed CNN exit poll data from the 2012 national election which included voting numbers by race and many other demographic factors. (Appendix A of the book goes into detail on how this chart was determined.)

In this chart, independents are split between the shrinking conservative-leaning and the growing, mostly, progressive-leaning voter, especially the Millennials.

To win that 51% of existing 2012 progressive voters, Democratic candidates must publicly and repeatedly address the concerns of this progressive voting majority: economic, social, racial, and environmental injustice. In other words, what will Dems do to minimize the, what are now extreme, inequalities born out of these injustices?

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Note in the Phillips’ pie chart, the 49% of whites and people of color who vote Republican/Conservative, including right-leaning independents. Also note, that John Dean, in Conservatives Without Conscience, identified the radical right, which helped elect the Tea Party to Congress, as 20 to 25% of the US population. If you add to this 25% an additional 3% of conservatives who seldom vote unless enabled by a leader like Trump, then that leaves 21% (49-28) for the right-leaning independents based on the first graphic above.
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Even though the odds are now in favor of progressives taking back our government from corporate control, Trump can still win if Democratic candidates don’t inspire the left-leaning independents and their base to vote by speaking about progressive values – assuming that voter suppression and election fraud equally impact both parties.