Most Democrats Want Normal. Nationally It’s Going Bad. In San Francisco, There’s Hope.

Thirty-eight percent of Democrats say the party should move toward the center. Twenty-two percent say further left. That’s nearly 2-to-1, and it cuts across every demographic in the coalition: Black voters (39% center), Hispanic voters (35%), white voters (41%), men, women, college grads, and non-grads. A new Manhattan Institute poll of 2,593 registered Democrats and 2024 Harris voters just confirmed what many of us have been saying for years. The median Democrat is a moderate. The loudest voices in the room represent a tiny fraction of the party.

The 11% Running the Show

The poll identifies three blocs inside today’s Democratic coalition: Moderates (47%), Progressive Liberals (37%), and what the researchers call the “Woke Fringe” (11%). That last group, self-identified Democratic Socialists and Communists, is the youngest faction (average age 43), the most conspiratorial, and reports significantly higher rates of poor mental health (25% vs. 14% for Moderates).

The Woke Fringe is 11% of the party but 90% of the noise. They’re the only faction where a majority (58%) wants to go further left. By 63% to 27%, all Democrats say future candidates should prioritize effective governing over fighting Trump and Republicans. Even the Woke Fringe agrees on that.

We saw this exact dynamic in San Francisco. The old DCCC opposed the school board recall that 70% of voters supported. They blocked the Westside Family Democratic Club from being chartered because the word “family” was called “a common dog whistle on the right.” A tiny minority was overriding the vast majority. Now we have 2,593 data points proving it’s a national pattern.

The Median Democrat Is Not Who Twitter Thinks

On issue after issue, the coalition’s actual positions look nothing like what dominates social media.

Immigration: only 11% say there should be no focus on deporting illegal immigrants. 65% favor skills-based legal immigration. Even within the Woke Fringe, only one in four favors zero enforcement. Crime: 71% to 18% support aggressive prosecution of gun crimes. 55% say police are essential. 74% reject political violence. Economics: only 14% say billionaires should not exist. 78% want the system preserved or reformed. On transgender policy: 59% support parental notification at schools, and 52% say 18 should be the minimum age for medical interventions.

Even on housing, where Democrats broadly support building more, 51% still prefer thorough permitting processes over faster approvals. The Abundance agenda is right on the merits, but it hasn’t yet won the messaging fight inside the Democratic base.

These aren’t Republican talking points. These are the median Democratic voter’s positions.

The Conspiracy Gap Nobody’s Talking About

The generational data is where this poll gets genuinely frightening. Among Democrats aged 18-29, 24% say the Holocaust was greatly exaggerated or didn’t happen as historians describe. That’s eight times the rate of Democrats over 65 (3%). Twenty-eight percent of young Democrats think NASA faked the moon landing. Thirty-eight percent view October 7th as an inside job.

Sixty-eight percent of self-identified Communists in the Democratic coalition support political violence. Twenty-nine percent of Democratic Socialists agree. These are the people showing up to low-turnout primaries and party committee meetings while the moderate majority stays home. This isn’t “kids being kids.” This is a radicalized minority with outsized structural influence over who wins nominations.

Mamdani Is Teaching Democrats to Lose

Want to see what the 11% looks like when it captures a primary? Look at New York. Zohran Mamdani won the mayoral race in November 2025 with 50.78%, opened his victory speech quoting Eugene Debs. Bernie Sanders immediately called his campaign “the direction in which the Democratic Party should be moving.”

House Republicans called him “the new face of the Democrat Party.” Trump called him “a 100% Communist Lunatic.” The AEI’s Ramesh Ponnuru identified the real danger: it’s not that Mamdani turns off swing voters, though he will. It’s that he teaches the activist class the wrong lesson.

What actually worked in November 2025? Abigail Spanberger, a centrist with a CIA background, won the Virginia governor’s race. Mikie Sherrill won New Jersey. The moderates cruised. The socialist scraped by in one of the bluest cities in America and handed Republicans their attack ad for every swing district in 2026.

Democrats lost 6 of 7 presidential elections from 1968 to 1988. At the California Democratic Convention in February 2026, the “Spineless Caucus” dressed as sea slugs demanding candidates “be Mamdani.” They have learned nothing. It’s the Dukakis years all over again.

Nancy Tung Showed the Way First

Nancy Tung was the person who radicalized me into politics. I couldn’t understand how district attorney at the time, Chesa Boudin, was allowing our Asian American elders to be maimed and murdered with no accountability. On a walk in 2021 through Noe Valley, she laid out the hard left progressive machine that had taken over the Board of Supervisors, the DA office, and the school board. And in that walk was the blueprint for Nancy’s leadership: we would recall them. We would win elections. We would re-take the SF Democratic Central Committee. And all of these things came to pass.

A career prosecutor and daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, she ran for DA in 2019 and lost to Chesa Boudin. The Board of Supervisors then blocked her Police Commission nomination because she was seen as too pro-police.

She was the lone common sense voice on the old DCCC, voting for the recall campaigns when the rest of the committee opposed what 70% of voters wanted. In March 2024, a moderate slate won 18 of 24 DCCC seats and elected her chair.

Politico reported that Tung’s SF Democrats proposed five resolutions: fully staff police departments, relax housing regulations, close learning gaps for Black and Hispanic students, and explore age limits on officials. The LA Times profiled her as leading the rise of Democratic moderation. Her diagnosis: “so much of party politics has been largely performative and not really relevant to the everyday lives of working people.” That’s exactly what this poll shows nationally, backed by 2,593 data points.

The Path to 2028

The primary numbers confirm the electability anxiety. Harris leads at 23%, Newsom at 20%. AOC sits at just 7% despite 60%+ favorability among Democrats. They like her energy. They don’t trust her to win. That gap between favorability and vote share captures the entire dynamic of a party that knows what it should do but keeps letting the loudest faction drag it somewhere else. Newsom beats AOC by 25 points head-to-head. Two-thirds agree a Democratic woman would “have a very hard time” winning in 2028. Fifty-six percent say the same about a Democratic Socialist.

Barack Obama sits at 70% very favorable, towering over the entire field. 55% support an outsider running for president. The party’s most beloved figure governed from the center. The voters want that again.

Nancy Tung proved the fix in San Francisco: organize the moderates, take back the party infrastructure, focus on what actually matters to people’s daily lives. Safe streets. Housing. Schools. Not resolutions about child labor in Africa’s chocolate trade while your own kids fall behind in math. The Woke Fringe wins because they show up to every primary and every committee meeting. The 47% moderate majority stays home.

That’s why you’re on this site. We’re not staying home anymore, and we’re going to the ballot box, and we’re organizing the way Nancy Tung and our moderate reformers organized in 2021. In five years we did it. And we’re going to keep going. If you didn’t become a member of Garry’s List yet, you should fill out your application now.

If it can be fixed in SF, we will fix it everywhere in America.