For Democrats, the size of their victory matters.
Progressives and moderates have been sparring all cycle over who will get to claim credit if they win on Tuesday. A new POLITICO Poll shows that the bigger the win, the more Democrats appear inclined to see it as a mandate to run more progressive candidates.
A smaller-than-expected victory next week would leave the party — and voters — torn over which direction to go.
The results reveal that the midterm election will have major implications over the next stage of the Democratic Party war over their identity — and could give progressives fresh ammunition ahead of a critical 2028 presidential race. Party insiders are closely watching contests where that infighting has been on display: From Abdul El-Sayed’s battle for Michigan Senate and Troy Jackson’s for Maine Senate, to Randy Villegas’ House race in California and Manny Rutinel’s in Colorado.
More than a dozen Democratic Party operatives and strategists said in interviews that both factions are already preparing to see a blue wave as validation of its own approach. Top super PACs and campaign firms are finishing strategy memos and finalizing lineups for a slate of post-election conferences where they intend to claim their way is the party’s future.
“You know what they say: Victory has a thousand mothers, right?” said Oliver Libby, the Democratic author behind the book “Strong Floor, No Ceiling,” which became a rallying cry for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries this cycle.
The survey, conducted by PF Global, found Democrats are nearly evenly split over what a smaller-than-expected victory next week would mean for future elections: 37% said it would signal a need to run more progressive candidates in the next election, while 35% said it would show the party should run more moderates. Another 28% said they didn’t know.
Those divisions largely fall along ideological lines. Among self-identified progressives, 52% said a smaller-than-expected victory would show that Democrats should run more progressive candidates. Meanwhile, a 45% plurality of self-identified moderates said that the same result would be evidence that the party should nominate more moderates, while just 28% percent said to run more progressives.
But if Democrats sweep key races — presented in the survey as a “large victory” — both progressives and moderates move toward running more progressive candidates in the next election. A majority of self-identified progressives — 61% — said it would show that the party should run more progressive candidates, while 35% of self-identified moderates agreed (compared with the 28% who said this for a smaller margin of victory).
A majority of Democratic midterm voters, including majorities of both self-identified progressives and moderates, also said a large victory would mean the party has a winning strategy for the 2028 presidential election, according to the poll.
“If Democrats had half a brain cell, they would look for the things that those two movements have in common,” said Chuck Rocha, a veteran Democratic strategist who has advised prominent candidates in both camps. “Whoever can combine these two things is who’s going to end up being somebody who is going to be a stalwart in ‘28.”
Progressives are eager for Tuesday’s results to bolster their argument that the party should move further to the left and that their candidates can win in competitive general elections. They’ve spent years feeling like they were being discounted by the party’s establishment wing, which was convinced that only more moderate candidates could cut into Trump’s coalition.
Progressives have cast a slate of battleground House and Senate races where their candidates felled more moderate primary rivals as major proof points — none more so than El-Sayed in purple Michigan’s marquee Senate race. A victory there, they say, could help springboard some of their biggest stars, like Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), for presidential bids. Both representatives and a slate of other progressive surrogates up through Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have hit the trail to help.
“Our North Star in 2026 is to prove the concept that bold, shake up the system economic fighters can win anywhere, including purple and red areas, as a prelude to the presidential election in 2028,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “We think we will have plenty to work with after the election. For us, Abdul is Exhibit A.”
PCCC is drafting a memo touting what it predicts as “two common themes in election winners: Outsiders and economic fighters who challenge corporate power,” according to a draft viewed by POLITICO.
Moderates, meanwhile, are poised to point to results as evidence that building broad coalitions can help Democrats compete in Republican strongholds.
“The interpretation game is already under way,” said Matt Bennett, co-founder of the centrist think-tank Third Way, which has been conducting advertising analysis and polling the electorate, with plans to release its findings after Election Day. “[Progressives] are going to cherry pick the couple of races that they win, and they are going to say, therefore … everybody should go to the left.”
A memo from The Bench — a Democratic organization that supports candidates with real-world experience, such as teachers, nurses or veterans — touts recruits like James Talarico in Texas and Adam Hamilton in Kansas as evidence of the strength of its approach working. Public polling shows Talarico and Hamilton in a competitive position in once-solid safe red states.
“While much of the Democratic establishment was busy studying how to talk to working people, our answer was simpler: Run them,” the memo released this week reads.
“I saw Democrats, a lot of people in the 2020 primary, adopt positions that were just electoral poison,” said Democratic strategist Lis Smith, an architect of Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential campaign who is a senior adviser to The Bench and works with The Bench’s sister organization, Majority Democrats. “You had Democrats say decriminalize border crossing, defund the police, and things like that. And we just can’t go back there as a party. We’re not going to be a majority party if we go down that road again.”
A new memo obtained by POLITICO from Blue Dog PAC, a moderate Democratic group chaired by Rep. Adam Gray (D-Calif.), already makes the case that there was a “Blue Dog overperformance in 2024 and the Trump era.” It points to over a dozen House races the group is involved in that were initially rated as “Solid Republican” or “Likely Republican” by the Cook Political Report, and are finishing the cycle in the “Lean Republican,” “Toss Up” and “Lean Democratic” columns.
But some Democrats say that all this focus on who won the progressive-moderate fight is missing the point entirely.
“Actually doing something if we do win majorities, that’s more important than a bunch of memos saying we’re the reason we won,” said Bill Neidhardt, who worked on Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign and is now advising Will Lawrence, who’s running for Michigan’s 7th District, and working to boost El-Sayed.
“Whether one super PAC says to the other super PAC, ‘We’re the better super PAC’ — I just think if that’s what victory looks like to you in 2026, you’re going to set the Democrats up to lose in 2028,” he added.
