DO AMERICANS THINK A DEMOCRAT IS WORSE THAN A SOCIALIST?

According to a recent Gallup poll, more than half of Americans won't vote for a socialist for president.

Less than half of Americans, 45%, say they would vote for a socialist for president, while 53% say they would not.

And yet Bernie Sanders leads Donald Trump by 4.6 head to head in the Real Clear Politics average. Do voters simply not know that Sanders calls himself a democratic socialist? Will they instantly abandon him when they find out?

One progressive organization attempted to measure this.

Data for Progress used the Lucid survey sampling platform to test three different versions of a Sanders and Trump polling matchup question. The survey was in the field from January 9 to January 19 of 2020 and ran these three polls:

* No information: “If the 2020 U.S. Presidential election was held today, who would you vote for if the candidates were Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump?”

* Partisan cues: “If the 2020 U.S. Presidential election was held today, who would you vote for if the candidates were Democrat Bernie Sanders and Republican Donald Trump?”

* Socialists and billionaires: “If the 2020 U.S. Presidential election was held today, who would you vote for if the candidates were Democrat Bernie Sanders, who wants to tax the billionaire class to help the working class and Republican Donald Trump, who says Sanders is a socialist who supports a government takeover of healthcare and open borders?”

In all three versions, Bernie beats Trump, albeit by slightly different margins. Sanders does best in the version of the question that provides no information at all. Giving the candidates their partisan labels [de]creases Sanders’s lead somewhat, and giving the hypothetical messages leaves Sanders with a lead that’s somewhere in between the two other scenarios.

The three poll questions aren't exactly analogous -- the version that introduces Sanders's socialism also introduces his campaign arguments (though it also introduces what we assume would be Trump's arguments against Sanders). But with that caveat, note that Sanders does just fine even when respondents are told he's a socialist.

In fact, he does better than when he's identified as a Democrat. The difference is slight and possibly insignificant -- but in a moment when the widely disliked Trump is the embodiment of the Republican Party (along with the widely disliked Mitch McConnell), the Democratic brand should be on the ascent. Yet Trump does best when the race is defined as a Democrat versus a Republican.

I believe that far too many Americans, including Trump-averse moderates in the heartland, have internalized the negative view of the Democratic Party relentlessly promoted by the right-wing media and Republican politicians. Democrats themselves have never offered the slightest pushback to this campaign of demonization, so it's a wonder the party ever wins elections outside blue strongholds.

So it's not surprising that the primary race seems to be coming down to a progressive who's never been a registered Democrat and a former Republican who registered as a Democrat only in the past couple of years. Republicans hate our party, and many of our voters think they have a point.