Welcome back to the Data for Progress newsletter, your weekly update on our research, blog posts, and memes.

One Reason We Haven't Passed Gun Reform: The Senate
After the tragedies in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio, a functioning political system would have responded by passing new gun reform provisions to prevent future atrocities. This is especially true considering that Americans are overwhelmingly supportive of certain gun control policies.

According to a Data For Progress analysis of Pew Research data, the majority of people in every individual U.S. state support each of the following gun reform proposals: 

• Close the gun show loophole

• Ban gun sales to people with mental illnesses

• Ban gun sales to people on no-fly lists

But still, no gun reform has been passed — and the structure of the U.S. senate is largely to blame. This is because people in rural majority-white states like Wyoming, Oklahoma, and West Virginia are more opposed to gun reform than those in other states, and these states are overrepresented in the Senate compared to their share of the population.

Another important takeaway: Americans tend to lean progressive on specific policies and lean conservative philosophically, and gun control is no exception. While certain specific forms of gun control are supported nationwide, the statement our respondents opposed the most was “controlling gun ownership is more important than protecting gun rights.”



As progressives continue their policy messaging, focusing on specific gun control policies that poll well as opposed to the “gun control vs. gun rights” debate may be an effective tactic.


Most Democrats Are Left Populists
Despite occupying different ends of the American political spectrum, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have both been frequently described as “populists.” However, many explanations of this term are vague and unclear. 

Political figures are generally identified as populists if they construct a particular notion of “the people,” who are virtuous and deserve power that is being denied to them by nefarious out-groups. As political scientist Cas Mudde has argued, this makes populism a “thin ideology.” Trump’s assertions that non-white immigrants are threatening American workers and Sanders’ critiques of special interests and “the 1%” fall under the same umbrella term.

What this definition misses, however, is the vast difference between how left-wing populists like Sanders and right-wing populists like Trump define “the people.” While Trump’s constructs “the people” as being racially homogeneous (as many populist figures tend to), left-wing populists see “the people” as those who have been economically oppressed by our capitalist economic system -- the multiracial working class. The broad construction of “the people” pitted against an antagonistic out-group is common to both, but how “the people” and their antagonists are constructed is quite different in important ways.

This being the case, Data for Progress is currently working on a survey battery designed to measure the degree to which voters endorse left populist sentiments espoused by Sanders, as well as Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. A preliminary analysis of the first set of items we tested is now up on the Data for Progress blog.

In this analysis, we tested how voters responded to a battery of statements focused on economic inequality, the disparity between billionaires and the poor, American companies’ outsourcing of labor, and the inadequate standard of living for many poor Americans. Democratic primary voters are, for the most part, high on the scale.



As one might imagine, likely Democratic primary voters higher in left populism are more likely to be considering voting for Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, while likely Democratic primary voters are more likely to be considering Joe Biden.



We also compared levels of left-wing populism to support for racism, sexism, demographics, and other factors, as well as how left populism maps on to views regarding how the government should handle poverty. To read the full piece, click here.


How Activists View the 2020 Race
As the Democratic primaries progress, dividing lines are emerging between which candidates highly involved Democrats support and which candidates less involved Democrats support.

In a recent blog post, we analyzed these differences. To begin, we asked voters whether they had attended a town hall, volunteered, protested, called an elected official, donated to a political cause, or posted on social media about politics in the last six months. 44 percent of Democrats had done none of these activities, while 8 or 9 percent had done four of more.



How do these differing levels of involvement translate to candidate preferences? For Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden, the correlations are most stark. As political involvement increases, consideration for Warren rises while consideration for Biden sinks.



Levels of political involvement also determine how likely important campaign events like the primary debates will change voters’ opinions. After the first debates, Kamala Harris and Julian Castro received notable bumps in consideration from more politically involved voters, but little change for less involved voters.


New Updates for our Green New Deal Scorecards
As support for the Green New Deal becomes a defining feature of the Democratic presidential race, we’re continuing to track and score which aspects of the Green New Deal candidates’ platforms are addressing.

At the end of July, we updated our scorecards for Jay Inslee, Warren and Biden to reflect their latest plans, and added new scorecards for Kirsten Gillibrand, Andrew Yang, and Tom Steyer.

Below is our current leaderboard (out of 48) for all currently-running candidates we’ve analyzed. Candidates who have dropped out are not included.

• Tom Steyer - 29

• Joe Biden - 26

• Elizabeth Warren - 22

• Kirsten Gillibrand - 22

• Beto O’Rourke - 20

• Michael Bennet - 19

• Andrew Yang - 8

• John Delaney - 7

NOTE: Inslee was previously at the top of this leaderboard with a score of 43 prior to dropping out of the race.

Also note that these metrics only account for the presence of specific components. They do not evaluate the merits of any particular approach to addressing these components.


Data For Progress in The Nation: Why Democrats Should Embrace ‘Internet for All’
In an August 2018 piece in The Nation, Data For Progress cofounders Sean McElwee and Jon Green teamed up with Vanderbilt professor Ganesh Sitaraman to make the case for “internet for all.”

If the government created a “public option for internet access,” we could connect rural communities to new economic opportunities and guarantee internet access as a basic human right. And although it might not be the most-discussed issue on the news, American voters are highly supportive of it.



Not only are the vast majority of 2016 Clinton voters in favor of a public option for the internet — by a whopping 77 percent to 6 percent margin — those who voted for Trump in 2016 are supportive too, with 43 percent in support at 28 percent in opposition.


Wealthy, White, and Over 50: The Demographics of the Democratic Presidential Donors
While in the past we’ve broken down voter support for Democratic candidates by various demographic factors, we haven’t had the chance to do the same for Democratic donors — until now.

In a project with Sludge, we found that while Democratic donors are likely to be old, white, and male overall, donors to certain candidates are especially likely to possess those demographics.

In terms of age, Sanders and Andrew Yang have the highest proportions of young donors, while Warren, Biden, Inslee, and Amy Klobuchar have the highest proportions of 65+ donors. In terms of income, donors to Cory Booker were most likely to have an income of greater than $100,000, while Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren donors were the least likely. 



Yang, Castro, and Tulsi Gabbard have the highest shares of nonwhite donors — particularly with Latino donors for Castro and Asian donors for Yang and Gabbard. Marianne Williamson and Kamala Harris have the highest proportions of female donors.

IMPORTANT NOTE: These figures only include donations of greater than $200, which are required to be itemized. For candidates like Sanders, who gets 77 percent of his fundraising total from donations of under $200, these figures could be misleading.


Data Bytes

• About A Quarter of Democrats Aren’t Planning On Voting for their Preferred Candidate: According to a Data For Progress survey, about 27 percent of Democratic voters are planning to vote for someone they do not ideally want to be president. This is particularly the case with Biden supporters, who might prefer other candidates if they had a “magic wand” but choose Biden largely for “electability” reasons.
  
  
   

• Americans Support Focusing Green New Deal on Frontline Communities: A few weeks ago, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Kamala Harris released a climate equity plan to ensure that the benefits of environmental legislation are focused towards the communities that need them the most. Jay Inslee released a similar policy as well.
  
  Do Americans support prioritizing climate spending on frontline communities, low-income communities and communities of color – the communities that are disproportionately affected by climate change? The answer is a resounding “yes.”
  
  57 percent of voters support the policy, while 22 percent oppose.
  
  
  
  In a separate question, we asked respondents whether they’d support the plan even if it required tax hikes. While the favorability of this proposal dropped, the respondents were still supportive, with a 43 percent to 36 percent margin of support.
   

• Data for Progress's Twitter Tracker: Although Twitter isn’t real life — something many of us forget on a daily basis — it still matters. That’s why Data For Progress just released a Twitter Tracker to display the number of retweets and likes of political figures.
  
  In the realm of politics, Donald Trump is the king of Twitter. Firmly in second place, however, is AOC. After these two, there’s a steep dropoff.
  
  
   

• Workers Deserve Paid Personal Time… and Requiring It Is Wildly Popular: Anybody who’s worked for a second in their life understands that working hard and not taking breaks can be detrimental to physical and mental health. In the U.S., we can and should create a system where workers can take vacation time without sacrificing pay — and better yet, American voters are supportive of such a system.
  
  According to Data For Progress polling, Americans are supportive of a similar vacation time system to those found across most other advanced countries. 37 percent of voters support two weeks of paid vacation, while double digit figures support three and four weeks of paid time off. Those supporting paid vacation time of less than two weeks constitute just 27 percent of our respondents.
  
  
  Support is similar among Democrats, Republicans, and independents.

From The Blog
The Unspoken Problem about the NYCHA Report from the Federal Monitor 
Left Populism in the Democratic Primary
Ambivalent Support: Why Do Primary Voters Say They’ll Vote for a Non-Preferred Candidate?
How Activists View the 2020 Race
The 2020 Contenders Take Big Steps Towards Racial Equity in The Green New Deal
Putting Ecological Inference to the Test, Part 1
Data for Progress's Twitter Tracker
Workers Deserve Paid Personal Time… and Requiring It Is Wildly Popular 
Putting Ecological Inference to the Test, Part 2

Media Hits
The Democratic Party Is Actually Three Parties @New York Times
Party Builder Leaderboard
Most Democrats Want Border-Crossings Decriminalized, Poll Says @Huffington Post
The Fight for a Green New Deal Can Start with Your Union Contract @In These Times
Democrats Should Run on Gun Control All Over the Country @Vice
The Weeds: The case for a Green New Deal @Vox
The Gist: The Leftist Takeover Edition @Slate
Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Yang, and Julián Castro have the biggest share of nonwhite donors in the 2020 race @ The Week
Elizabeth Warren's Latest Plan Tackles U.S. Injustices Against Tribes and Their Lands @Gizmodo
Inside the progressive hunt for vulnerable House Democrats @The Hill


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