America’s two-party system is often the subject of frustration for voters who feel left out by the options on offer. Two-thirds of Americans say they don’t feel adequately represented by the two parties and want more options, and the portion of people who identify as independent has risen over the last decade, while affiliation with either party has slightly dipped.
Enter Michael Bloomberg, a former Republican (if in name only) turned former independent turned Democratic candidate for president, running on a pragmatic, quasi-moderate platform. He embraces the social views of liberals while positioning himself as fiscally more centrist than Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders. His theory of the case seems to be that as someone with an “independent” streak, he is going to be able to appeal to the sorts of swing voters that will be necessary to win the presidency.
Bloomberg is about to discover there is not much of a thirst for that particular ideological cocktail — in the Democratic Party or the electorate as a whole.
This is not so different from the Howard Schultz problem of early 2019, though Bloomberg appears ready to commit even more resources to the fight, and does have electoral experience to lean on. However, there’s even more new evidence that the ideological coalition of the electorate just doesn’t have much room for Bloombergian politics.
My firm Echelon Insights conducted a survey of 1,002 registered voters across the country to pose a hypothetical question: Suppose our current political parties were swept away and we were rebuilding from scratch, this time with five parties instead. We presented respondents with options that are fashioned after the choices available to voters in many European democracies. While respondents weren’t told what the parties names would be, they were given brief descriptions: “Pass a ‘Green New Deal’ to build a carbon-free economy with jobs for all, break up big corporations, end systemic inequality, and promote social and economic justice” was our version of an American “Green” party equivalent, for instance.
We find the most popular party is a “Labor” party equivalent, focused on strengthening social safety net programs, unions, and reducing income inequality, with 28% of Americans choosing it. Second most popular, at 21%, is a “Conservative” party that looks somewhat like the Republican Party of the Bush-era, focusing on free enterprise, traditional values, and a strong national defense. Nearly as popular is a “Nationalist” party at 19%, which takes its cues from the Trump platform of stopping illegal immigration, ending unfair trade deals, putting America first, and standing up to political correctness.
Then, there’s a sizable drop off to the bottom two options. Our “Green” party only garners 10% of respondents, while our Bloomberg-esque party (lovingly nicknamed the “Acela” party after the train favored by political and business elites in the Northeast) only captures 12%.
Most interestingly, however, are the divides within parties. Republicans are evenly split between the Bush-era party and the Trump-era party. Independents split fairly evenly between the two left- and two right-leaning parties, with only 12% choosing “Acela” — a reminder that “independent” and “moderate” are not at all synonymous.
Democrats, meanwhile, are among those most receptive to the “Acela Party” message, but only one in five choose it. It is particularly popular among college-educated white voters, and among the top three Democratic front-runner’s voter bases, it is Warren’s bloc that has a much higher proportion of these “Acela” voters than either Biden or Sanders.
Despite the similar ideological positioning of Sanders and Warren, their base of voters is not the same. If Bloomberg’s appeal is largely concentrated among college-educated white voters, that makes him a greater threat to Warren than to someone like Joe Biden. The same dynamic seems to hold for someone such as Pete Buttigieg, who also performs much better with college-educated white voters than other blocs in the Democratic party.
If Bloomberg set a billion dollars on fire tomorrow, he’d hardly miss it. Lucky him! Running for president is marginally more productive a use of those funds, especially since being a federal candidate opens up the lowest ad rates on television. But while this might go slightly better for him than the candidacies of Howard Schultz or “Two Percent” Tom Steyer, due to being more charismatic and having more political experience, his ideological formula is not particularly one Americans, including and especially independents, are seeking in 2020.
