California Governor Gavin Newsom suggested during a recent CNN appearance that to win again, Democrats need to become “more culturally normal.” In response to this obvious point, far-left commentators accused Newsom of betraying the party’s values and ceding moral ground to the Right.
The backlash was predictable—and, if you look at the data on who Democrats are, absurd. Most Democratic voters aren’t radical. But the party is run by people who are, and who have built institutions to ensure that their preferences dominate.
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A new Manhattan Institute survey of nearly 2,600 Democratic voters and 2024 Kamala Harris supporters offers the most granular look yet at this disconnect. Contrary to broadly held assumption, the Democratic base is not a caricature coalition of socialist revolutionaries and woke militants. The activists are there, but they are a minority—and not a particularly large one.
In the survey, a plurality of respondents (38 percent) said that their party should move toward the ideological center. Just 22 percent supported shifting to the left. Democratic voters also said, by a greater than 2-1 margin, that future party leaders should prioritize effective governing over fighting Donald Trump and Republicans.
The median Democratic voter, in other words, is not asking for a more far-left version of the party. He wants something closer to the moderation of Bill Clinton or the politics to which Newsom is now unconvincingly paying lip service.
Analysis of the data suggests the Democratic coalition can be broken into three distinct blocs. Moderates—voters who identify as moderate Democrats, independents, or anti-Trump Republicans—account for 47 percent. They are demographically diverse, older on average, and the most electorally flexible—only 45 percent say they have never voted for a non-Democratic presidential candidate.
A second bloc, Progressive Liberals, make up 37 percent. They are reliably left-leaning, whiter than the other blocs, and disproportionately concentrated in suburbs and on the West Coast.
Last comes the Woke Fringe—voters who identify as democratic socialists or Communist. These add up to just 11 percent of the coalition. The Woke Fringe is the youngest of the three groups, the most conspiratorial, the most likely to report poor mental health, and—not incidentally—the most likely to spend excessive sums of time on the internet. Notably, previous quantitative and qualitative Manhattan Institute research on the GOP coalition shows that the youngest and most hyper-online Republicans also skew hardest toward ideological wackiness.
As this distribution implies, our polling reveals that moderate views are more common than many might expect. Take immigration: in our poll, only about one in ten Democratic voters actually supports open borders. Fewer than a quarter want to increase legal immigration levels. Majorities favor shifting the system toward skills-based admissions while prioritizing the deportation of criminal offenders.
On public safety, Democrats are divided over their support for the criminal justice system in general. But they strongly support aggressive prosecution of gun crimes, view the police as essential to maintaining order, and overwhelmingly reject political violence. On transgender issues, most voters support preventing biological boys from competing in girls’ sports, banning transgender medical and surgical interventions for minors, and requiring schools to notify parents if a child requests to identify as transgender or change pronouns in class.
The coalition’s economic views are similarly less revolutionary than the party’s rhetoric often implies. Democrats favor redistribution and consumer protections, but only small minorities embrace the more radical view that America’s economic system is so rigged it ought to be torn down or that billionaires should not exist. Most express real concern about welfare fraud. Large numbers show renewed interest in free trade and other supply-side policies.
On foreign policy, most Democrats affirm Israel’s right to exist, though younger voters are markedly more skeptical. Remarkably, two in three Democratic voters still say that America has historically been a force for good in the world.
If Democrats are this moderate, why does the party so frequently appear otherwise?
Part of the answer is the institutional ecosystem that now governs Democratic politics. Over the past two decades, a network of progressive advocacy groups, ideological nonprofits, activist donors, and aligned unions has accumulated enormous influence over candidate recruitment, messaging, and policy priorities. Primary candidates who deviate from activist orthodoxy often face organized opposition, well-funded primary challenges, and relentless pressure campaigns from within their own coalition.
As a result, Democratic politicians’ incentives point toward escalation rather than moderation. It’s often safer, electorally speaking, for them to echo the loudest voices in the party than to represent the quieter instincts held by most of their voters.
Economics supercharges this dynamic. Many party leaders depend directly on government spending, regulation, or nonprofit advocacy for their livelihoods. This produces a kind of patronage politics, as the leadership benefits materially from an ever-expanding progressive agenda. Any electoral value offered by moderation pales in comparison to the threat that it poses to these interests.
In such circumstances, meaningful reform rarely comes from within the system itself. It often requires an outsider willing to disrupt it. A decade following Donald Trump’s hostile takeover of the Republican Party—which paired a radical, populist disposition with substantive policy moderation—it is striking that a majority of today’s Democrats now say they would support some notable figure from outside politics running for president in 2028.
Whether such a figure will emerge remains to be seen. What the data make clear, however, is that the Democratic electorate itself is not the problem. Most Democratic voters don’t want a more radical party. They want a more normal one.
Photo by BRYAN DOZIER/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images