How Pundits May Be Getting Electability All Wrong

In the 2020 Democratic primary, electability is like the end of The Sopranos: Everybody talks about it, but nobody agrees on what it means.

Third Way, a center-left think tank, offers important insights on the question of electability in an extensive new study of Democratic primary voters it is releasing this morning. The results, provided exclusively to The Atlantic, signal that primary voters may be judging electability on different grounds than most political insiders believe, and that the verdict on which candidates are most electable may be more malleable than many expect.

“So much of the Beltway chatter about electability is about race, gender, and ideology,” says Lanae Erickson, Third Way’s senior vice president for social policy and politics. “That was not what people talked about.”

But the research also indicates that however voters assess electability, it looms as an overriding factor in the decision making for most Democratic voters. That suggests former Vice President Joe Biden’s consistent lead in polls on the question of which Democrat is most likely