Broad Coalition (Outside Left)

One of the things Ana regularly focuses on is “how do we build broad coalitions…?” I’ll be honest, I’m not an expert when it comes to political classifications, and especially not polling, but I found myself looking at pew research earlier today and notice that they had separate categories for “Progressive Left” and “Outside Left.”

pewresearch. org/politics/2021/11/09/outsider-left/

Things I thought of note (aside from similar ideology) was the fact that they represent the largest percentage of young voters, and had some of the least favorable outcomes when it came to voter turnout…

I know this may not quite meet the definition of “broad,” but I wondered what everyone here would think…? Do we just consider Outside Left to be synonymous with Progressive? Or do we think that they are actually their own political affiliation that we could work with to inspire higher turnout for candidates who are aligned with our mutual interests? Do we think that they’re statistically likely to already vote along similar lines with us, so there wouldn’t be enough return on investment to try to join forces? Or does the current lack of turnout in their group suggest a possibility?

Eager for any possible discussion.

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Data science can be very misleading. They often invent language that implies meanings that sometimes appear to be a marketing effort of sorts. The other problem with this data is conclusions you can draw from early data are very dangerous. They suffer from the axiom that a little information can be a dangerous thing. Data and models are misunderstood often. Data and modeling is much more like a dialogue then a linear A to B. The best way to looks at this is like a pixelated image coming into focus. The earlier the guess the more it is based on conjecture. The other side of this is often we place to much importance on modeling because they can work so well. Data breadth and quality are difficult to calculate. This means drawing lines and creating categories. This is why I imagine you’re apprehensive to discuss this. The categories are all made up and likely have to reform many times to maintain accuracy. This means people tend to fight over language like territory in academia. This also means that language in these circles is tied to reputation and allows others to tribalistically codify through jargon generation / adoption.

I think the way to move forward is just allow the OP to frame and work from there. So I will say in your frame I think that could talk about a politically actives on the left vs those who vote but don’t engage as much in street level engagement.

As for turn out the problem is progressives need to become attractive to them. This means we have to collectively address our weakness at the same time as we accentuate our strength. This will allow them the social cover to join us politically.

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Thanks for your response and perspective! I’ll be honest, I didn’t do a whole lot of due diligence when it came to vetting the information that came from pew research, but I understand that polling is seldom black and white. I like your final remarks about addressing our weaknesses in order to better market ourselves or at least to begin forging alliances within the outside left or otherwise. :slight_smile:

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