The pro-Dem talking heads of CNN and MSNBC tend generally to line up with the folks on Twitter

And that is no surprise to me, at all.

The Democratic Electorate on Twitter Is Not the Actual Democratic Electorate

Today’s Democratic Party is increasingly perceived as dominated by its “woke” left wing. 

But the views of Democrats on social media often bear little resemblance to those of the wider Democratic electorate.

The outspoken group of Democratic-leaning voters on social media is outnumbered, roughly 2 to 1, by the more moderate, more diverse and less educated group of Democrats who typically don’t post political content online, according to data from the Hidden Tribes Project. 

This latter group has the numbers to decide the Democratic presidential nomination in favor of a relatively moderate establishment favorite, as it has often done in the past.

. . . .

In an informal poll of Democrats on one of our Twitter accounts on Monday, about 80 percent said they were liberal, and a similar percentage said they had a college degree. 

Only 20 percent said political correctness was a problem, and only 2 percent said they were black.

. . . .

The relative moderation of Democrats who are not sharing their political thoughts on social media, and therefore of Democrats as a whole, makes it less surprising that Virginia Democrats tolerated Mr. Northam’s yearbook page. 

It makes it easier to imagine how Joe Biden might not merely survive questions about whether he touched women in ways that made them feel uncomfortable, but might even emerge essentially unscathed.

It also helps explain why recent polls show that a majority of Democrats would rather see the party become more moderate than move leftward, even as progressives clamor for a Green New Deal or Medicare for all.

. . . .

In reality, the Democratic electorate is both ideologically and demographically diverse. 

Over all, around half of Democratic-leaning voters consider themselves “moderate” or “conservative,” not liberal. 

Around 40 percent are not white.

Roughly a quarter of Democrats count as ideologically consistent progressives, who toe the party line or something further to the left on just about every issue. 

Only a portion of them, perhaps 1 in 10 Democrats over all, might identify as Democratic socialists, based on recent polls.

Traditional liberals — another relatively white, well-educated bloc of Democrats — are also overrepresented on social media. 

They’re united with the progressive activists on the issues that divide Republicans and Democrats.

. . . .

In recent decades, most of the candidates who have found their core strength among the party’s ideologically consistent, left-liberal activist base have lost. 

Gary Hart, Jerry Brown, Jesse Jackson, Howard Dean and Mr. Sanders all fell short against candidates of the party’s establishment, like Walter Mondale, Al Gore and Hillary Clinton. 

The establishment candidates won the nomination by counting on the rest of the party’s voters.

. . . .

Of course, the Democratic Party has moved to the left in recent years. 

It has moved far enough left that there’s plenty of room for a progressive candidate to win the nomination. 

It would be a mistake to dismiss Mr. Sanders’s chances of winning the nomination just because white progressives have generally fallen short in the past. 

The name recognition he earned in 2016 will be an asset that prior outsider candidates haven’t been able to count on, and so will his impressive small-donor fund-raising.

But it would also be a mistake to assume that outrage on social media means outrage throughout the broader electorate. 

And it would be a mistake to assume that more moderate Democrats are out of step with the party’s electorate.