Twitter Democrats vs. IRL Democrats
Democrats who tweet about politics are whiter, wealthier, more liberal, and less patriotic than those who don’t.
From Ron DeSantis’ buggy campaign launch with Elon Musk to Tucker Carlson’s new webshow, Twitter (now “X,” although we prefer to call it by its old name for the sake of this piece) has been making news for its role in amplifying extreme voices on the right.
The good news: Twitter is not real life. The land of hashtags, snarky callouts, and now $8 blue checkmarks is a source of “community” and dopamine to activists on the far-right and far-left — but is ultimately a sideshow.
This is a lesson Democrats learned in 2020. If you spent time scrolling through the left wing Twitterverse circa 2019, you’d be forgiven for thinking the country was clamoring to #AbolishICE and enact the #GreenNewDeal and #Medicare4All. You probably would have thought most Democrats were voting for @BernieSanders and @ewarren in the primaries. And if you were judging him by his relatively quiet presence on the platform, you’d have assumed @joebiden’s campaign was dead on arrival.
Of course, none of that turned out to be true. As one of Biden’s campaign aides said of their victory in November, “we turned off Twitter, we stayed away from it.” Why? “We knew that the country was in a different headspace than social media would suggest.”
Who would’ve thought that the people who spend all day dunk-tweeting on their political opponents inhabit a different headspace than the rest of the country?
In spring 2019, just as the Democratic presidential primaries were getting underway, a handful of reports explored the gaping chasm between the Twitterverse and real life.
A Pew Research report found that just 23% of Americans said they use Twitter, and those users were more likely to be Democrats than Republicans. The report also found that “the top 25% of users by tweet volume produce 97% of all tweets, while the bottom 75% of users produce just 3%.” Not real life.
Analysis by the New York Times used data from More in Common’s Hidden Tribes study and found that Democrats who post political content on Twitter are whiter, more educated, and more progressive than those who don’t. Again, not real life.
This year, The Welcome Party conducted an original analysis of the latest American National Election Studies (ANES) dataset — which includes data from before and after the 2020 presidential election — to see what else could be gleaned about the differences between Democrats who tweet and those who don’t.
We split self-identified Democrats into two groups: those who tweet about politics (“Twitter Democrats”) and those who don’t (“IRL Democrats”). Our findings shed further light on the stark disconnect between the Democrats’ Extremely Online progressive faction and the rest of the party.
1. Most Democrats are IRL Democrats.
According to our analysis, IRL Democrats make up the vast majority (87%) of all Democrats, while Twitter Democrats account for just 13%.
2. Twitter Democrats voted for Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in 2020. IRL Democrats chose Joe Biden.
Among those who voted in the 2020 presidential primaries, Twitter Democrats are nearly twice as likely to have voted for Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren (49%) than IRL Democrats (26%). Meanwhile, IRL Democrats are 46% more likely to have voted for Joe Biden (60%) than Twitter Democrats (41%).
3. Twitter Democrats are whiter, wealthier, and more educated than IRL Democrats.
Twitter Democrats are 13% more likely to be white (60%) than IRL Democrats (53%), while IRL Democrats are 50% more likely to be Black (21%) than Twitter Democrats (14%). Twitter Democrats are wealthier too, being 35% more likely to make more than $100,000 per year (54%) than IRL Democrats (40%). They’re also more educated and are 30% more likely to have a four-year degree or more (52%) than IRL Democrats (40%).
4. Twitter Democrats are more liberal than IRL Democrats.
Ideology: Twitter Democrats are more than twice as likely to identify as “extremely liberal” (18%) than IRL Democrats (7%). Meanwhile, IRL Democrats are nearly twice as likely to identify as moderate (25%) than Twitter Democrats (13%).
Public Safety: Twitter Democrats are more than twice as likely to say federal spending on dealing with crime should be decreased (33%) than IRL Democrats (16%), while IRL Democrats are nearly twice as likely to say it should be “increased a lot” (29%) than Twitter Democrats (15%).
Immigration: Twitter Democrats are 62% more likely to say that immigration levels should be increased (68%) than IRL Democrats (42%), while IRL Democrats are 75% more likely to say immigration levels should be kept the same (42%) than Twitter Democrats (24%).
Climate Change: Twitter Democrats are 34% more likely to say that the issue of climate change is “extremely important” (55%) than IRL Democrats (41%), while IRL Democrats are more than twice as likely to say it is “moderately important” (21%) than Twitter Democrats (9%).
Abortion: Twitter Democrats are 19% more likely to say that “by law, a woman should always be able to obtain an abortion as a matter of personal choice” than IRL Democrats, while IRL Democrats are nearly three times more likely to say that “the law should permit abortion only in case of rape, incest, or when the woman’s life is in danger” (14%) than Twitter Democrats (5%).
5. Twitter Democrats are less patriotic and optimistic about America than IRL Democrats.
Twitter Democrats are more than twice as likely to say that being American is “not at all important” to their identity (17%) than IRL Democrats (8%). Meanwhile, IRL Democrats are 57% more likely to say that being American is “extremely” or “very” important to their identity (55%) than Twitter Democrats (35%). When it comes to the question of upward mobility, IRL Democrats are more than twice as likely to say there is “a great deal” or “a lot” of opportunity to get ahead in America (23%) than Twitter Democrats (10%).
As the 2020 cycle kicked into gear, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren dominated the Democratic Twitterverse. But as millions of pragmatic voters flooded the primary polls with Biden votes, they quickly learned that Twitter isn’t real life — and that the Democrats who spend time there think differently than those who don’t.
As 2024 ramps up and GOP hopefuls like Ron DeSantis and others flock to Elon Musk’s new playground, they too will witness the disconnect between the Extremely Online activists who tweet and everyday voters.
The country is in a different headspace.