Misleading polls fuel socialist hopes that aren’t met on Election Day
Recent primary elections reveal a disconnect between polling predictions and actual voter outcomes concerning socialist candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Even though polls frequently enough showed these candidates either tied or leading their more centrist opponents, Election Day results frequently favored their more moderate rivals, challenging expectations and giving ammunition to centrist Democrats.Such as, DSA-backed Oliver Larkin lost his Florida primary by a large margin despite recent polling suggesting a close race. Similarly, other left-wing candidates in Michigan and Wisconsin underperformed relative to polls.
Experts point out that primary polling is inherently uncertain due to factors like higher undecided voter counts, late movement, and challenges in identifying likely voters. Poll misses have intensified debates within the Democratic Party, wiht centrist groups like Third Way emphasizing that most prosperous campaigns tend to flip red or purple seats blue, not necessarily the far-left ones. Third Way plans to spend millions countering the DSA’s influence, which they associate with ideas opposed by mainstream Democrats, such as abolishing the senate or the Department of Defense.
While some left-wing Democrats, like Florida’s Angie Nixon, have secured her primary, overall results have highlighted the challenges faced by socialist candidates. Democratic strategists advise centrist efforts to build coalitions and focus on shared priorities, emphasizing the importance of messaging and collaboration across party factions. Experts warn that primary polls are often unreliable,and election outcomes suggest a need for more nuanced understanding of voter behavior as the party navigates internal ideological divisions.
A string of primary elections is exposing a growing gap between the expectations set by polling for socialist candidates and what voters are actually delivering at the ballot box.
Democratic Socialists of America-backed candidates entered several recent primaries with polls showing them tied with, narrowly trailing, or even leading their more centrist opponents. Election Day has often told a different story.
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This week, DSA union organizer Oliver Larkin lost his primary against Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) in Florida’s 25th Congressional District by almost 30 percentage points after earlier this month promoting a poll that had him neck and neck with the centrist third-term incumbent.
“We are in a statistical tie with Rep. Jared Moskowitz — with just 11 days until the election!” Larkin posted on X.
Moskowitz, who has been criticized by the far Left over his support for Israel, won on Tuesday 63.5% to Larkin’s 36.5% and will now defend his seat in a race the Cook Political Report considers to be a toss-up.
“Florida is known for hurricanes and so the DSA is a disaster area in Florida — and there’s no federal reimbursement coming to help these people,” Moskowitz told Politico.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) similarly fended off a socialist challenger in Florida’s newly redrawn 20th Congressional District, with activist Elijah Manley coming in third with 14% to Wasserman Schultz’s 46%.
The Florida results followed two other races in which pre-primary polling painted a rosier picture for left-wing candidates than Election Day ultimately produced. Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul el Sayed won his primary against Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), but by a narrower margin than polling had suggested. A week later, DSA-backed Francesca Hong lost Wisconsin’s Democratic gubernatorial nomination to Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley despite pre-primary polls showing her ahead.
The polling misses have given centrist Democrats ammunition in their escalating fight with the party’s socialist wing, even as pollsters caution that primary elections are notoriously difficult to forecast.
“It is clear that a number of the polls of some of these key races ended up being pretty far away from where the public and the voters actually were, and in most cases, it seems like the polls overstated the level of support for some of these more DSA-affiliated candidates,” said Kate deGruyter, the senior communications director at the centrist Democratic group Third Way. “Clearly there’s a campaign tactic that both sides do where there’s an effort to really try and create a sense of momentum, and I think the onus is on both reporters and savvy political actors to really be discerning communicators.”
Third Way announced this month it would spend $15 million to counter the DSA between now and the 2028 election.
Marist Institute for Public Opinion Director Lee Miringoff said that “primary polling has uncertainty way beyond margin of error and greater than for general elections.”
“Undecided voters tend to be higher, late movement is not unusual, likely voters are harder to identify making turnout iffy, and the candidates are more unique in their attraction,” Miringoff told the Washington Examiner. “In addition, some of the surprising outcomes have to do with overestimating younger voters in some primaries. So, the bottom line is that primary polls may falsely set expectations and certainly make for risky predictions.”
The results have not all gone against the Democratic Party’s left flank. Florida Democratic state Rep. Angie Nixon prevailed over retired Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a witness in President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial, in their special Democratic Senate primary election, 56% to 44%.
But Nixon’s victory also underscored the electability argument centrist groups such as Third Way are making against the party’s left wing. After her victory, Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics shifted the race from likely Republican to safe Republican.
“For us, the critical project of the Democratic Party is not turning blue seats bluer — it is turning red and purple seats blue,” Third Way’s deGruyter said. “It’s folks from the moderate wing who have flipped 50 seats from red to blue. We have yet to see the far-left flip even one seat from red to blue. So there’s a lot to kind of discern about where the public is, but broadly, I think that is going to hold true.”
DeGruyter reiterated that Third Way’s anti-DSA work was “more taking on the organization itself,” rather than individual candidates.
“The kind of ideas that are a part of that DSA platform include things like abolishing the U.S. Senate, abolishing the Department of Defense, closing prisons, defunding the police departments, ending NATO,” she said. “There’s a whole host of things that are deeply, deeply toxic, and frankly counter to what the conversation has been all about, which is how are we reducing costs? How are we helping real people? How are we making sure Democrats are focused on the things that are a priority to voters’ everyday lives.”
At the same time, Democratic strategist and pollster Stefan Hankin encouraged fellow centrists in his party to reach out to their far-left counterparts because they are coming across as “old, dodgy,” and not wanting to “spend any effort selling [their] views or actually talking to voters about like why this approach is better.”
“It’s not about discrediting the other side,” Hankin told the Washington Examiner. “It’s putting forward your view of why that should be the majority view of the party.”
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Hankin advised Democrats to think about themselves as a coalition and find “four or five things we 100% absolutely agree on.”
“Someone needs to be out there knowing that these two factions are not going to go away, so how do we live together?” he said.
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