Recent polls show that Democratic voters are most concerned about health care, gun control, climate change and immigration. Still, in poll after poll, they say decisively that nominating a candidate who can beat President Donald Trump in the general election is more important than finding one whose views align perfectly with their own.
With Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts running neck-and-neck with former Vice President Joe Biden, the stakes on Tuesday are higher than at any point in the race thus far. Here’s a glimpse at the issues and ideas that will be on many viewers’ minds as they watch the Democratic debate.
Trump and Impeachment
The House’s impeachment inquiry is underway, and Democrats broadly support removing Trump from office.
Roughly 9 in 10 Democratic voters said in a Quinnipiac poll released last week that they had been paying at least some attention to impeachment news, and nearly as many said that if a president asked a foreign leader to investigate a political rival — which Trump did — that is cause enough to be impeached and removed.
But the president may not be the only politician imperiled by the controversy. At Tuesday’s debate, that political rival, Biden, will be looking to assuage Democrats’ fears about his family’s role in the Ukraine story. By a margin of 50% to 32%, Democrats nationwide said in an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll this month that Biden’s chances of becoming the Democratic nominee were likely to be more hurt than helped by the fact that Trump had mentioned him in a phone call with the Ukrainian leader — even though Biden is not believed to have broken the law.
And ultimately, a candidate’s general election appeal is paramount to Democratic voters. By a wide margin — 61% to 37% — Democrats said in a separate NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll last month that they cared about finding a nominee who was likely to beat Trump more than they cared about nominating one who personally inspires them.
Health Care and Medicare for All
Disagreements over health care dominated the first three Democratic debates, and the issue is likely to play a prominent role in Tuesday’s.
The rising costs of health insurance and pharmaceutical drugs continue to worry voters. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll in September found that 7 in 10 Americans believed the federal government should make lowering prescription drug prices a top priority. And 64% considered lowering the overall cost of health care to be a top priority. Among Democrats, those numbers are even higher.
Yet Democratic candidates disagree on how to achieve these goals. Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont spent much of the first three debates arguing on behalf of Medicare for All, which would effectively replace private health insurance with a government-run system. Biden and other more moderate candidates have only endorsed a public option, which would allow Americans to choose between a government plan and private ones.
Last month’s Kaiser poll found that the general public was about evenly split on whether to support Medicare for All, but Democratic voters largely supported the idea. More than three-quarters of Democrats nationwide favored creating a national Medicare for All program, with 51% favoring it strongly, according to the poll.
But as is often the case, people’s responses depend on how the question is worded. In a Quinnipiac poll last month, when given a choice between keeping the private health care system and building on Obamacare, or replacing private insurance outright with Medicare for All, just 47% of Democratic voters chose Medicare for All, compared to 44% who preferred a more incremental approach. This suggests that candidates advocating a fully government-run system need to persuade more Democratic voters to unite around the idea.
Gun Control
All Democratic presidential candidates — and an overwhelming majority of Democratic voters — now support universal background checks for gun buyers. There are similar levels of support for banning all assault weapons.
But less consensus exists on what to do with the assault weapons that Americans already own: All the candidates support some kind of program in which the government would buy weapons back from gun owners, but none of the three leading Democrats — Biden, Warren or Sanders — support making that program mandatory. Seven in 10 Democratic voters support mandatory buybacks, according to an August Quinnipiac poll, although less than half of all voters do.
There is a similar lack of consensus among the Democratic candidates on whether to force all gun owners to register their weapons in a national database. Democratic politicians long dismissed the idea of a gun registry as a fearmongering tactic from the National Rifle Association, but it now enjoys broad support from the public: 62% of Americans back the idea, including 85% of Democrats.
Most candidates now favor establishing a registry, though some — including Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana — do not. Others, like Biden and Sanders, say it should apply only to owners of assault weapons.
Climate Change
Democratic voters widely believe that climate change represents an international emergency — 84% said so in the August Quinnipiac poll — and roughly 9 in 10 think the United States is not doing enough to address global warming.
All the major Democratic candidates have expressed support for the Green New Deal, though some have been more guarded than others. All five senators who will debate Tuesday night co-sponsored the bill. Buttigieg has simply called it “the right beginning,” while Biden’s campaign website endorses it as a “crucial framework.”
But the Green New Deal enjoys broad support from the American public, with 63% of respondents to an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll in July saying they like the idea of investing government money to fund sustainable infrastructure projects and green jobs. Among Democrats, it’s a particularly winning concept; 86% of Democrats nationwide back the Green New Deal, the poll found.
Instituting a tax on carbon emissions enjoys less support from the public — just 50% of Americans like the idea, according to that poll — but 71% of Democrats support it.
Immigration
Even as Trump has made cracking down on immigration a central facet of his administration, Americans have generally become more accepting of immigrants. This year for the first time, a majority of Americans (55%) said in a Gallup poll that they believed immigration tends to help the U.S. economy, not hurt it. For Democrats, that’s especially true.
And a recent Pew study found that views of Immigration and Customs Enforcement — the agency most directly associated with the president’s aggressive immigration policies, and which some immigration activists want abolished — have taken a negative turn. Fifty-four percent of all Americans now hold an unfavorable view of ICE, a 7-point jump from last year. And Democrats in particular feel this way: 77% of them expressed a negative view of ICE.
By a wide margin, Democrats believe immigration should be either kept at current levels or increased: According to Gallup, 41% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents want to encourage more immigration into the country, compared to just 13% who want it discouraged. That marks a 10-point leap since Trump’s election.
And it’s clear that Democrats worry about the vilification of immigrants — a central facet of Trump’s public identity. A full 82% of Democratic voters said they considered prejudice against immigrants a “very serious” problem in a recent Quinnipiac University poll.
This article originally appeared in
.