President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party have been insisting for years now that former and potentially future President Donald Trump is an extremist and is someone who is a threat and poses a danger to democracy. Democrats are continuing with that narrative ahead of the 2024 election, as Biden runs for reelection as it looks increasingly likely that 2024 will be a rematch of the 2020 presidential election. A new poll from Cygnal, however, says it's Democrats who are viewed as the more extreme party.
The poll was released on Wednesday, and shows Biden leading Trump narrowly by 47 percent to 45.8 percent among voters. That's just slightly outside of the poll's margin of error of plus or minus 2.16 percent. The poll points to a tricky landscape for Democrats come 2024.
As the headline for a poll-write up suggests, "Poll: RFK Jr., Manchin’s Impact on 2024 + Newsom’s Failed ‘Plan B’ Experiment and Party Extremism," a major takeaway has to do with the role of a third-party candidate in the race. Independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was previously running as a Democratic primary challenger to Biden, takes votes away from the current president.
There's also how issues rank in terms of importance, and the extremism factor comes into play there as well. Cygnal Vice President of Polling, Brock McCleary highlighted a few top takeaways, including how:
Only 7% of Democrats list abortion as their top issue. This reveals a big disconnect between how voters rank this issue and how Democrat campaign operatives use the abortion extremism message to bludgeon Republicans up and down the ballot. Expect this to remain the same through 2024 as Democrats attempt to paint Republicans as radical and keep them on the defensive.
Yet, when it comes to which party is considered to be more extreme, the Democratic Party (47%) is now seen more extreme than Republicans (40%) with 12% of Democrats say their own party is the more extreme than Republicans. Younger voters report the same thing with those aged 18-29 (47%) and 30-44 (55%) handing extremist marks to Democrats while 33% of Republicans say their party is more extreme.
When it comes to the order of importance that voters consider nine issues to be, "inflation and the economy" comes in first with 32.5 percent saying that's the most important issue. Next is "illegal immigration," at 14.4 percent, with all other issues garnering 9.7 percent support or less. Overall, abortion comes in with just 4.3 percent support, only ahead of the 2.3 percent of voters who say they're "unsure."
As the takeaway notes, not even Democrats regard abortion as particularly important when they're asked to rank issues. It's tied with "crime and public safety" at 7 percent, and are only just ahead of the 6 percent of Democrats who say "illegal immigration" is their most important issue. To Democrats, their most important issue is still "inflation and the economy," with 25 percent saying so, but 13 percent say "threats to democracy" is, making that the second highest ranking issue. For voters overall, that's fourth, with 9.1 percent saying it's their most important issue.
If Biden and the Democrats want to portray Republicans as "extreme" on that issue, good luck with that. This is especially given that Democrats, including Biden, support taxpayer funded elective abortions as well as abortion throughout all nine months for any reason without legal limit. The White House has been promoting the Women's Health Protection Act (WHPA) in particular.
When it comes to the question on extremism, the poll specifically asked "which political party in the United States do you consider to be more extreme," prompting 46.9 percent of respondents to say Democrats, while 40.3 percent said Republicans. A plurality of voters ages 18-29, at 47 percent, said Democrats were, and a majority of those voters ages 30-44, at 55 percent, said that Democrats were. And Democrats were indeed more likely than Republicans to say that their own party is the more extreme one, as the takeaways note.
In our latest poll, more #voters see @TheDemocrats as more extreme than the GOP by 7% - with 42% of Democrats saying their own party is more extreme. Check out the data here: https://t.co/Kj2cBUW4vn pic.twitter.com/PDUEv3JEk9
— Cygnal Polling & Analytics (@cygnal) December 15, 2023
The poll was conducted December 5-7 with 2,000 likely general election voters and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.16 percentage points.
Regardless of how this trend continues to go and how it plays out for Democrats, it cannot be ignored that they have relied on and continue to rely on such a narrative about extremism.
Since November 15, the Biden-Harris HQ X account has shared six posts with the word "extreme" in it, and 7 posts with the word "democracy" in it. Just last week, Biden himself used the term "extreme Republicans" when trying to guilt them into providing funding for Ukraine. And let's not forget how much Democrats also collectively freaked out over Trump's quip during a Fox News town hall with Sean Hannity about being a "dictator" for his first day in office.
Demonizing political opponents as "MAGA extremists" or "MAGA Republicans" has been a favorite of the Biden administration, even as it's gotten them into trouble, as was the case with White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and the Hatch Act. Such a narrative may even have helped explain why Republicans had a more disappointing midterm election year in 2022 than predicted, as former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) offered in his analysis the morning after the election.
McCleary also provided further insight on the extremism factor in a statement for Townhall, which included the trend in how Americans see Democrats are Republicans as more extreme.
"Since April, Democrats have been seen as more extreme than Republicans but only by very narrow margins. That changed briefly this Fall when Republicans jumped ahead of Democrats. This month, we saw a huge shift with Democrats seen as more extreme by 7-points. Digging a bit deeper, we find that 42 percent of Democrats say their own party is more extreme. This is also evident in younger voters with 47 percent of those aged 18-29 and a whopping 55 percent of voters 30-44 years old," he shared.
There's also some further intrigue on this issue when it comes to why that might be. "What's unclear is whether they see party extremism as a sort of badge of honor or an inevitable negative of political realities in today's climate. Among conservatives, we see examples of this openness toward party extremism when we see what's happening on college campuses or at the southern border, but it's unclear why Democrats see their party this way when only 33 percent of Republicans say the same thing about their party," he continued.
It's quite the thoughtful point, and could spell bad news for Democrats either way. If voters don't see extremism as a good thing, as the trends prevails, then the Democrats could be in trouble on this. If Democrats see extremism as a badge of honor, though, then perhaps Biden and everyone connected to him should stop going with that narrative, lest they want to come off as particularly hypocritical and on one of the party's top issues, no less.
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