In the News

What Does Threat to Democracy Mean To Swing Voters?

Jan 19, 2023

Amy Walter
01/19/23

(The Cook Political Report) The progressive group End Citizens United, agreed wholeheartedly with Biden’s assessment. “The results of the 2022 election, where election deniers across the country were defeated, coupled with an abundance of research prior to and following the elections, clearly demonstrates that voters care about democracy,” ECU President Tiffany Muller told me. “It was a motivating factor in their vote and they rejected extremists who threatened our democracy.” This is not a surprising conclusion coming from a group whose mission statement promises to “fix democracy by getting big money out of politics and protecting the right to vote” and ending “our rigged political system.” In other words, ECU was not a passive bystander in the economy vs. democracy messaging wars. To get a better sense of how swing voters processed the threat to democracy issue in 2022, and how they are thinking about the issue going forward, ECU conducted a series of focus groups with key swing voters. I was able to listen in on three of them… When asked by the moderator if special interest or dark money could be considered a threat to democracy (a key talking point for ECU), most of the Latino men agreed.