One of the most prominent features of social media is not it’s ability to connect regular people to elites, but rather to substitute in person interactions for largely one-directional elite broadcasting in the guise of social interaction. The practical effect of this has been that both regular users and elites themselves have less of a direct connection between themselves and average people, both often mistaking the elite centric bubble as representative of outside reality.
This is reflected in gross displays of elite misunderstanding of average Americans’ thinking, including a mismatch between interpretations of public opinion, even as increasingly inaccurate polling data can still somewhat reflect actual political preferences.
One of the clearest manifestations of this gap has been in the misunderstanding over the weight of so-called “cultural issues” which often play out in elite circles of discourse, paired with a flagrant underweighing of the political costs of both political and thus economic disorder exacerbated by elite inaction and obstructionism.
As the data since the mid-20th century has shown, besides the two cores of hardened partisans whose policy preferences are often more shaped than the parties than vice versa, the so-called “independents,” for which the two parties often compete in the few remaining competitive states and districts left, are often the least policy driven voters out of the electorate.
Still, despite election swings, tecent polling data from Pew shows that of these independents who are not adhered to the ideology of either of the two camps, they in fact largely support both “progressive” economic and social measures.
A majority support democrats on economic issues and foreign policy:
Government intervention in the economy (~54%)
that the “federal government has a responsibility to make sure all Americans have health care coverage” (~72%)
Suggest that labor unions have a positive influence (~54%)
Favor raising the minimum wage (~74%)
Raising taxes on large corporations (~70%)
the notion that “in foreign policy, the US should take into account the interests of its allies, even if it means making compromises with them” (~69%)
and that “good diplomacy is the best way to ensure peace” (~72%)
Moreover, on cultural issues, a majority agree with the majority position of Democrats on every single issue except for capital punishment:
On the legalization of abortion, assault weapons bans, marijuana legalization, free tuition, and stricter environmental rules, “sideliners” or “independents” agree with democratic majorities, indicating that the so called culture gap in the actual policy space is mostly manufactured.
What this shows also is that the elite discourse echo space, such as spaces like twitter, supposed Democratic Party support for controversial memes such as defunding the police have been a frequent point of complaint for many, but the reality is that these assertions are not supported by a majority of even the most entrenched subgroup within the Democrats or “left.”
What this polling should indicate is that Democrats are not only in basic alignment with “independents” on virtually every major issue, with similar numbers of Republicans and Democrats in swing districts and within the electorate at large, what seems to be driving partisan swings is not in fact policy differences. The drivers could instead be either a mismatch between policy preferences and voting patters, but they could also be because of a credibility gap between “independents” and the Democratic Party, which has campaigned on these issues for decades but never delivered.
The Democratic Party has gone out of its way to remove popular policy planks like Medicare for all and minimum wage increase promises from its platform, and has made virtually no effort to push for such bread and butter issues. This is despite frequent hollow rhetoric about “working class” values. In their actual policy agendas, the two parties differ little in that they both offer basic tax cuts and infrastructure spending with different targets, but virtually nothing else.
Even though independents align with the Democratic Party on most of their professed policy positions, there is little in the way of evidence that the Democrats intend to deliver on any of them, removing whatever incentive swing voters might have had to support them.
Thus, while there may be a culture gap between out-of-touch and detached elites on the right and left, amongst the voting public there is no real culture gap on policy preferences between Democrats and so-called “moderates.” Instead, the gap may be the elites in their focus on arcane, unlegislatable, and non-federal issues, like school choice or critical race theory, issues with which the vast majority of Americans neither consider, nor are at all relevant to their federal voting behavior.
The only gap identified by such polling is between promises on popular issues, and actual intent to legislate.