Democrats Support Institutional Reform And Want New Programs To Apply To Everyone
By Sean McElwee, John Ray, and Ethan Winter
The Democratic presidential primary debates have each included questions asking candidates to confront the feasibility of passing their respective agendas. If a Democrat wins the Presidential election in November, they are likely to face an adversarial Senate and an adversarial Supreme Court, both equally stuffed with conservative ideologues.
Candidates have come up with a few possible solutions that would allow them to pass new policies in the face of partisan opposition. Some suggest that if Trump loses, the dam will burst and Republicans will come to their senses that wildly popular Democratic policies should pass. Others suggest mobilizing the people against Republicans, to produce a public pressure wave that forces them to come to the table. Still others propose simply reforming existing institutions so that fewer Republican votes, which disproportionately come from small, mostly-white states, are needed at all.
Of those strategies, Democrats overall prefer reforming the Senate to reduce or eliminate the need for a supermajority rather than a simple majority of votes. Women and nonwhites drive support for ending the filibuster. Net support for pursuing institutional reform is positive across the ideological spectrum.
At the same time, few voters believe that convincing Republicans to vote their way is the right approach. Of the new programs Democrats have proposed, voters across the board demonstrate consistent and high support for universal programs rather than targeted or “means-tested” programs.
Together, this suggests two things. One, Democrats believe that the clearest way forward to reform is by changing the rules to favor the majority over the minority. Two, Democrats believe in bigger programs that will help more people -- the kind that tends to attract more Republican opposition. Democrats want big structural reform both to institutions and to policy.
Earlier in the survey, which focused on Democratic likely voters and caucus-goers (“Democratic voters”), we asked,
Let’s say a Democrat is elected as president in 2020. Even if it's not exactly right, which of these strategies do you think would be most effective for them to get things done as president?
<1> Persuade Republicans that Trump’s loss means that it is in their best interest to support Democratic policies
<2> Make it easier to pass Democratic policies without Republican support by requiring a simple majority vote in the Senate to pass legislation, instead of the current 60 vote threshold required for most legislation
<3> Use pressure from ordinary people to convince Republicans to support Democratic policies
As is typical in our surveys, voters saw each of these options in a randomized order.
Overall, Democratic voters reported they’d prefer the strategy of requiring a simple majority vote in the Senate to pass legislation, instead of the current sixty-vote “supermajority” threshold. This includes both ideological moderates and those who report they are liberal/somewhat liberal, even controlling for other factors. As this is a survey of likely Democratic primary voters and caucus-goers, we’ll focus on liberals and moderates, without many conservatives to concern ourselves with.
Moderates are more split on the three options and are basically tied between whether reforming the Senate or using public opinion pressure is the best strategy. While moderates are also slightly more favorable toward the strategy of persuading Republicans to their side, this is clearly the least preferred of the three options across the board. With a Republican Senate whose only new idea in the past twelve years has been “ensure Barack Obama is a one-term president,” Democrats are mostly disabused of the notion that Republicans are here to help.
Support for the Senate reform approach is stable and high across racial groups, with the exception of Black voters who are more supportive of this approach than are other groups. An outright majority, 55 percent, of Black voters reported believing the Senate reform strategy would be the most effective. Black voters are also the least likely to prefer the “public pressure” option, while each of the groups here are about equally pessimistic toward the “persuade Republicans” strategy.
Controlling for other factors (including race) we also find that women are slightly more supportive of institutional reform to the Senate than are men, although both men and women clearly favor institutional reform over the other strategies. About 47 percent of women and 41 percent of men supported this approach. Men and women were equally pessimistic about persuading Republicans to support Democratic policies.
This is consistent with another finding of the survey, which is that Democratic voters prefer programs that will benefit everyone over programs that are targeted. Typically, universal programs face even more opposition from Republicans than doing targeted or means-tested programs. Later in the survey, we asked voters,
Even if it's not exactly right, which statement comes closer to your view on designing policies?
<1> We should make government programs universal, like Social Security, so all Americans share in the taxes and benefits of the programs
<2> We should make government programs targeted, like the Earned Income Tax Credit, so that people who need benefits get them and we don't need to raise taxes as much
<3> Not sure
Democratic voters prefer universal programs overall. Fully 50 percent of Democratic voters say they prefer letting all US citizens participate in government programs, compared to just 32 percent who say programs should be targeted.
Ideology is the primary divider of opinion on this question, controlling for other factors. Democrats who identify as ideologically moderate are significantly more likely to prefer means testing, and actually prefer it to universal programs by a 41-35 margin. However, with the sample size here, this is a statistical tie between preferring universal and targeted programs.
Because Democratic voters (and most Democratic candidates) prefer and prioritize new programs that are universal in nature, we should anticipate overdrive Republican opposition under the next Democratic president. Consistent with their policy preferences (and likely in many cases, lived experience) Democratic voters reasonably infer that the best strategy to pass legislation going forward is to take away power from the minoritarian Republican party rather than try to persuade them to do what’s right.
Sean McElwee (@SeanMcElwee) is a co-founder and the Executive Director of Data for Progress.
John Ray (@johnlray) is a senior political analyst at YouGov Blue
Ethan Winter (@EthanBWinter) is a Senior Advisor to Data for Progress.
This survey is the second wave of a larger project on Democratic primary voters. The first included 2,953 interviews conducted from June 24th to July 2nd, 2019 by YouGov on the internet of registered voters likely to vote in the Democratic presidential primary in 2020. A sample of 6,116 interviews of self-identified registered voters was selected to be representative of registered voters and weighted according to gender, age, race, education, region, and past presidential vote based on registered voters in the November 2016 Current Population Survey, conducted by the U.S. Bureau of the Census. The sample was then subsetted to only look at respondents who reported they were likely to vote in their state’s Democratic primary or caucus. The second wave included 1,619 interviews based on recontacting respondents participating in the first wave (a 55% recontact rate). Respondents participated from January 18th to January 27th, 2020.
Here, we present topline summaries of demographic subgroups of interest whose relative support and opposition levels are statistically significant in more sophisticated statistical models that include controls for other demographic and political factors. For example, we focus on the overall numeric quantities for simplicity.