RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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'The Country Isn't Ready': How an Electability Myth Became a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Pete Buttigieg are two of the most popular political figures in America. Can voters realize it? By Alex Ashley
Two of the most popular political figures in America right now are a democratic socialist from the Bronx and a gay man from Indiana.
Last week, the University of New Hampshire's Granite State Poll — a long-running survey widely used as an early bellwether in one of the nation's first primary states — found them statistically deadlocked among prospective 2028 Democratic primary voters: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York leads the field at 22 percent, with former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg just one point behind.
It's not just a New Hampshire thing. A national poll released by Emerson College last Thursday found Buttigieg leading the Democratic field outright at 19 percent, with Ocasio-Cortez tied for third at 13. In May, a national AtlasIntel poll had Ocasio-Cortez leading the field nationally, with Buttigieg in second.
Yet, with the midterms just four months away, and presidential primaries two years out, conversations about their electability have already begun.
The question, as always, is whether the country is ready for the likes of Ocasio-Cortez, a Puerto Rican bartender-turned-congresswoman and self-described democratic socialist; or Buttigieg, an openly gay father of two who already swung and missed during his run six years ago.
But if decades of polling, voting, and peer-reviewed research are to be believed, voters themselves are rarely the problem.
The most influential voter in American presidential politics has never cast a ballot, been polled or focus-grouped. Yet, every election year, they materialize as a figment of the country's collective political imagination; a vast, faceless electorate spread across its endless counties and exurbs. These hypothetical voters are, by all accounts, a remarkably consistent bunch — unmoved by data, indifferent to the current political moment, unswayed by decades of change. They are the last Americans for whom the optics of the Oval Office must match the portraits in the hallway. Editor’s picks The 250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century So Far The 100 Best TV Episodes of All Time The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century
This question of electability on identity grounds — whether a candidate is straight, white, or male enough to earn the country's votes — is far from new. It is a shadow of doubt that has trailed so-called "unconventional" candidates for decades, invoked almost exclusively in the third person. "I would vote for him or her in a heartbeat," the thinking goes, "but voters would never."
The same rhetoric is alive and well today — dressed in the language of pragmatism, but functioning as something closer to preemptive surrender — as donors, operatives, and party insiders narrow the field on voters' behalf, based on who they believe those voters will accept.
But with the midterms approaching, and the 2028 presidential field already taking shape, voters are about to be told, again, who they are and are not ready for. The stakes of this particular bias have rarely been higher. Related Content The Democratic Party Has Never Been Weaker. This May Be a Good Thing AOC, Alex Jones, and the Pope Condemn Trump After Unhinged Iran Threat Bernie Sanders and AOC Want to Pump the Brakes on AI Development AOC Knows Why Jake Paul Didn’t Want to Watch Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Set: ‘He Makes You Look Small’
To better understand this phenomenon, consider the example of a political candidate you may never have heard of.
In 2018, Regina Bateson — a Stanford-educated political scientist and former U.S. diplomat — entered the Democratic primary for California's 4th Congressional District, a red-leaning stretch of the Sierra Nevada foothills that had been held by Republican men for decades.
She expected the usual obstacles: an incumbent-friendly district, a thin donor network, a party infrastructure slow to commit. What she found instead became the subject of a striking 2020 peer-reviewed study , in which Bateson herself describes a pattern of voters discriminating against a candidate "out of concern that others will object to the candidate's identity."
Again and again, in living rooms and community halls across rural stretches of Northern California, Bateson heard some version of the same thing. The voters liked her. What they couldn't vouch for was each other. She ultimately ended her race in third, and went away wondering if what she had experienced on the campaign trail was an anomaly or a systemic pattern.
Bateson's study, conducted through MIT's Political Experiments Research Lab (PERL), drew on three separate experiments involving nearly 6,000 Americans. The sample was designed to match census demographics, and weighted for political knowledge and engagement. Her findings showed "the majority of subjects overestimate others' levels of sexism and racism," and that "concern about others' biases could be causing individuals to doubt the electability of diverse candidates."
A Black female candidate with identical qualifications to a white male, for example, was rated 20 percent less electable. And among her study's most politically engaged and informed subjects — those most likely to be donors, activists, and party insiders — the gap widened. Among subjects most likely to shape a primary — politically attentive, plugged-in party people —the bias widened, tracking less with their own prejudice than with how biased they assumed everyone else was.
"As polarization makes partisans increasingly desperate to win general elections, donors, party activists, and voters may gravitate toward white, male primary candidates who seem like a safe bet, rather than taking a risk on a woman or a person of color," Bateson wrote. "That's strategic discrimination in action."
Her findi...
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