Some Democrat strategist is going to wake up in a cold sweat later tonight after seeing this.
The Democratic Party conducted an internal poll of swing voters, including their feelings on the “squad” and socialism. The result are absolutely brutal when juxtaposed with the stated positions of those running in the 2020 Democratic primary race.
The poll was leaked to Axios and here are some of the results.
Dem internal poll of swing voters (via @axios) pic.twitter.com/6Rfv9zBFsK
— Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) July 14, 2019
The poll — taken in May, before Speaker Pelosi’s latest run-in with AOC and the three other liberal House freshmen known as “The Squad” — included 1,003 likely general-election voters who are white and have two years or less of college education.
- These are the “white, non-college voters” who embraced Donald Trump in 2016 but are needed by Democrats in swing House districts.
- The group that took the poll shared the results with Axios on the condition that it not be named, because the group has to work with all parts of the party.
The findings:
- Ocasio-Cortez was recognized by 74% of voters in the poll; 22% had a favorable view.
- Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota — another member of The Squad — was recognized by 53% of the voters; 9% (not a typo) had a favorable view.
Socialism was viewed favorably by 18% of the voters and unfavorably by 69%.
- Capitalism was 56% favorable; 32% unfavorable.
- “Socialism is toxic to these voters,” said the top Democrat.
Headlining members of the fresh face caucus, Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have favorable numbers just above the DMV. Actually, Omar’s 9% might not even meet that threshold. I’d have been interested to see the results of Rashida Tlaib but that wasn’t published here.
The numbers on socialism are nice to see. While it’s no doubt a popular trend among young, liberal voters, to see swing voters still sharply opposed to that dumpster fire ideology gives me hope we’ve still got a few more years left in us.
There was some mixed news in the poll though. Trump is doing worse with these voters than he did in 2016 but has shown improvement since the 2018 election, where many of the same swing voters swept Democrats into power in the House. Trump should have room to win the rest back if he can present a disciplined message to this group down the stretch while exposing the radicalism of the Democrats.
As I’ve shared before, I think Bernie Sanders is dead at this point so I’m not going to bother speculating about what would happen if he were the nominee, but if Elizabeth Warren ends up in the position, which is looking very possible right now, the Democrat party is going to have to contend with her outspoken support of socialist policies. This poll also shows why Joe Biden has outpaced everyone else. He’s not actually a moderate, but just his appearance of moderation compared to his challengers has given him a level of support in the middle that the others can’t really touch. That could change though if he keeps floundering as he has.
Trump’s biggest advantage in 2020 is how insane Democrats have gone. I see no evidence they are planning to turn the ship around at this point.
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