The 2028 Democratic Presidential Contenders, Ranked by Nate Silver

In January 2025, when the U.S. House took up legislation to bar trans women’s participation on women’s sports teams, all but two Democratic representatives — Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez — voted against the bill.

When the Senate took up a similar proposal three days ago, every Democrat present voted against it.

Why don’t more Democrats explicitly moderate their stands on transgender rights, immigration and other issues? Those who maintain far-out positions are well to the left of the electorate and its emblematic median voter. The trans issue clearly weakened Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, leaving her open to devastating pro-Trump ads.

In the case of one of the most disputed rights claimed by some parts of the transgender activist community — transgender women’s participation on women’s sports teams — Democrats have clear liberal grounds to challenge that claim, by asserting that they are protecting a woman’s right from unfair competition.

But this phenomenon — drifting far from the median voter — is hardly limited to the left. There are many factors behind the reluctance of both Democrats and Republicans to shift to the center.

For one thing, donors, especially the growing legions of small donors, prefer more extreme candidates. Adding additional pressure, what have come to be known as “the groups” — advocacy organizations on the left and the right — demand fealty to policies that are sometimes politically costly; they threaten to support primary challengers to run against those who defy their authority. On a psychological level, Democrats and liberals are morally committed to protecting marginalized groups from harm and defending racial and sexual minorities.

Before exploring these pressures, let’s go to the dominant political fact of life working against moderation, which is that there are decisive majorities in both the House and the Senate that have no interest in abandoning more extreme stands. Many Democrats and Republicans won their seats with the promise to fight the partisan opposition until hell freezes over.

The combination of partisan gerrymandering, the deepening of affective polarization — smoldering hatred of partisan adversaries — and the steadily growing number of safe seats has created a calculus encouraging, nurturing and fostering political positioning far to the left or right of the median voter.

The key piece of evidence: Of the 435 House districts, The Cook Political Report identifies 36 as competitive, broken down as 17 tossups, 15 leaning Democratic and four leaning Republican. Adding the eight likely Democratic and 17 likely Republican districts, which are much less likely to be competitive, brings the total to 61, or a measly 14 percent of all 435 members.

In this one-seventh of House districts that are at least somewhat competitive, there is a real payoff on Election Day for a candidate to moderate more extreme stands.

That is decidedly not the case in the remaining 86 percent of House districts — 374 of them, 189 solid Democratic and 185 solid Republican — that are not competitive, with the winner chosen in the primary and the general election a formality.

Candidates in these safe districts are under no pressure to moderate in order to win a general election, and primary voters are free to vote ideologically instead of strategically.