Republican pollster Jim Hobart said on Tuesday that Democratic voters in New York’s 14th Congressional District were enthused by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s age and gender, rather than her democratic socialist affiliation.
“I don’t know if Ocasio-Cortez was necessarily identified by voters as a socialist candidate. What she was thought of was a minority candidate, a woman candidate and a young candidate running against someone who was really the picture of the Democratic establishment,” Hobart, who is a partner at Public Opinion Strategies, told Hill.TV’s Joe Concha on “What America’s Thinking.”
“She was young, she was a minority, and she was a woman, and that’s what made them excited about her in that particular election,” he said.
Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, defeated longtime Rep. Joseph Crowley in the 14th District’s Democratic primary last month.
While her candidacy and surprise victory have excited a slew of progressive voters, establishment Democrats have warned that she is not representative of the nationwide Democratic Party.
“They made a choice in one district. So let’s not get yourself carried away as an expert on demographics and the rest of that,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said.
“Within the caucus or outside the caucus, we are … again, we have an array of genders, generations, geography, and there is opinion in our caucus, and we’re proud of that,” she added.
“The fact that in a very progressive district in New York it went more progressive than … well, Joe Crowley is a progressive, but she’s more left than Joe Crowley, is about that district. It is not to be viewed as something that stands for anything else.”
— Julia Manchester
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