Seriously: what's going on with Elon Musk? And what happens when "free speech absolutism" runs up against the realities of running the nation's de facto digital public square? How has Joe Biden performed in his first two years in office? And what can Americans expect from Braver Angels in 2023? In the final episode of the year, Ciaran O'Connor convenes fellow Braver Angels leaders John Wood, Jr., Monica Guzman, April Kornfield, and Gabbi Timmis for a freewheeling roundtable discussion.
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Faith leaders can help renew America's social and civil contracts by protecting every eligible vote and honoring lawful results. Here's how to get involved.
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Dignity, Democracy, and the Courage to Stay Engaged
Sep 28, 2026
Crises are arriving faster than we can absorb them: climate, loneliness, artificial intelligence, housing, addiction, debt. In communities across Washington state, what I see is not mainly anger. It is a sense of being overwhelmed.
When everything feels urgent, people are tempted to withdraw. And when enough of us quietly withdraw, we can begin to believe that nothing works anymore and the rules no longer apply.
In moments like these, we need to return to essential questions: Who counts as fully human? What respect do we owe one another? And how will we put those answers into everyday practice?
Our religious and ethical traditions carry generations of reflection on these questions. In my Christian tradition, every human being bears the image of One Creator. Every one. That conviction challenges every attempt to reserve dignity for the powerful, the familiar, or our own group. My belief in One Creator commands me to recognize all people as human beings—joined in a dignity and identity that transcends our differences.
Jesus spoke of “another commandment like” belief in One Creator: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” It refuses to let us love only our own group, for we are part of a larger one: human.
Apply this to elections: The right to vote is based on the dignity of every person and the worth of every group.
Other traditions offer their own understandings of compassion, reciprocity, responsibility, and accountability. Their differences matter. And yet even though our beliefs are very different, the basic moral agreements in these traditions are strikingly similar.
Call this our social contract: the commitment to treat one another as people whose dignity and well-being matter. We inherit this contract, but each generation must decide whether to practice it.
Our civil contract gives the social contract a public framework: constitutions, laws, courts, elections and terms of office. It establishes how we exercise power, resolve disputes and hold leaders accountable at scale.
The Declaration of Independence’s assertion that “all men are created equal” named a promise the nation’s founders did not fully achieve. Slavery, the treatment of Indigenous peoples, and exclusion of women were embedded in our beginnings. Yet, inspired by the founders’ vision, generations of Americans have worked to make equality a reality. The response to a broken promise is not to abandon it, but to make changes to fulfill it.
Our traditions don’t just carry values; they remind us that multiple values inform our actions. The prophet Micah calls us to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God. Justice and kindness, love of self and neighbor belong in the same life.
Apply this to elections: Only eligible voters should vote. Every eligible voter should be able to vote safely and have that vote counted accurately. These commitments support each other. Together, they protect our shared ability to choose our leaders.
Free, fair, and safe elections also require a commitment that lasts beyond Election Day: honoring the lawful outcome. Recounts and legal challenges have their place. We must examine evidence and correct errors through established processes. Our willingness to accept the result cannot depend on whether our preferred candidate wins.
That is where our two contracts become personal. Can I recognize my neighbor’s equal standing when their vote helps defeat my candidate? Can I remain committed to our shared rules when I am disappointed or afraid?
Faith communities can help us practice those commitments. Congregations, synagogues, mosques, temples, and sanghas ground people in the deep values of the social contract. They offer places to grieve, examine our conduct, repair harm, and begin again.
The work is ordinary and concrete. Help people register and vote. Encourage people across political differences to serve as poll workers. Check rumors before forwarding them, starting with the ones that flatter your side. Pray publicly for an honest count and for the losing side’s dignity. Commit in advance to nonviolence. When something goes wrong, pursue accountability through lawful means.
This is the purpose of Faith in America, a partnership that includes Paths to Understanding, Braver Angels, and Interfaith America. We are inviting people across religious and political differences to support free, fair, and safe elections. We provide resources to help leaders in doing so. www.braverangels.org/faith-in-america.
Online prayer gatherings are planned for October 11 and November 1. The invitation also includes recording a one-minute video explaining why these elections matter, ideally alongside someone with whom you disagree.
These actions make a public promise: We will stay engaged. We will protect one another’s participation. We will hold ourselves to the commitments we ask others to keep.
An election cannot resolve every crisis. But how we conduct it — and how we respond afterward — helps determine whether we retain the capacity to face those crises together.
We inherit teachings about our obligations to one another. We write rules for our common life. In this anxious moment, we must renew both contracts through what we do and how we respect each other.
That is how we build a country where we can belong and thrive together.
Rev. Terry Kyllo is a Lutheran pastor and directs Paths to Understanding, a Washington State organization working to gather neighbors and grow trust, and a leadership partner in Faith in America.
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My Students Are Politically Apathetic. Here’s What Colleges Can Do To Get Them Involved and Engaged.
Sep 27, 2026
A recent national poll conducted by Harvard University revealed that young Americans are a pessimistic bunch. People between ages 18 and 29 view inflation and the rising cost of housing as national crises. More than a quarter of young adults believe they’ll end up worse off financially than their parents. And only 13% say the country is on the right track.
Yet when it comes to doing something about it — such as voting — Gen Z is pretty apathetic. Fewer than half of young Americans voted in the 2024 elections. With the midterms fast approaching, the Harvard survey found that just 35% of Gen Z definitely plan to vote — but without much enthusiasm. Only about 1 in 10 (12%) feel motivated to participate.
Ideally, developing civic engagement and political socialization skills begins at home, with young people listening to their parents discussing the news and going with them to vote. Then, throughout elementary, middle, and high school, students should be formally learning about American democracy and how government works. Long before they reach college, young people should have learned to listen to other people and hold civil conversations.
But whatever civic and political awareness young people are gaining before entering college, it has been smothered by their frustration and disconnection from the larger world. It seems like absolutely everyone around them — their parents, their classmates, their real and parasocial friends on social media — are yelling about everything. They are bringing this attack-first approach with them to college and the communities where they will live as adults.
Although colleges might not think it’s their job to teach their students how to talk about civics, government and American democracy, it is. Instead of leaving families, the internet, and the nation’s K-12 schools to do the heavy lifting, institutions can help their students learn civic discourse by getting them to grapple with these three questions.
First: Why should we care?
For a generation that possesses little in the way of civic obligation, classes that touch on government and democracy should start with this fundamental question. In Oklahoma, where I was born, raised, and teach, all students who want to earn a college degree must take American Federal Government, a political science course that teaches them about the U.S. government, political parties, political theory and behavior, and civil rights.
But just because this course appears on their degree plan doesn’t mean that students understand why it’s so important to learn about civil liberties, the separation of powers, and the Electoral College. As the Founders might have said, it’s not self-evident.
I start each class by explaining the “why.” Although much of what I teach focuses on what’s happening in Washington, D.C., I urge my students to think about these issues in the context of their friends and neighbors. Government is about establishing the rules we all use to get along, resolve our disagreements, and live our lives. Civil society works only if we care about one another and can use discourse and dialogue to reach consensus on even the most polarizing and divisive issues.
Second: How do I advocate for things I care about when I’m scared of the reaction I’ll get?
Online discourse is rough and tumble — so much so that many students simply don’t bother to start conversations. My students missed out on crucial socialization opportunities during the pandemic by being isolated at home. That makes virtual discussions difficult for them. In-person conversations are nearly impossible. They’re scared to advocate for family, friends, or their community for fear of being ignored or even canceled.
Having hard conversations are fundamental to creating a viable civil society. Removing this intimidation barrier so students will express an opinion and back it up is critical.
Rose State College has been fortunate to partner with Unify America, whose Civic Gym initiative gives my students a forgiving space to build their civic muscles and practice having civil discussions. The program paired my students with students from other colleges across the country for a structured virtual one-on-one discussion about the issues of the day. In many instances, students agree. When they don’t, the program helps them find some common ground and figure out a way to disagree with respect and with understanding of where the other person is coming from. Not only did my students become more informed about issues facing Oklahoma and the nation, they got to hone their dialogue and thinking skills — skills that should serve them well long after they leave my classroom.
Third: How do I really learn about these issues?
Reading, researching, and talking to other people are great ways to learn about politics and government. The best ways are to see it in action.
Our campus is only about 15 minutes from the state capitol in Oklahoma City, so I take my classes to meet with lawmakers and interest groups, advocate for an issue they’re passionate about, and make their voices heard. If I taught at a more remote campus, I’d urge my students to attend school board and town council meetings to see their local government at work and engage with their local elected officials.
Immersive, first-hand civic experiences such as these are invaluable. Plus, they get my students to practice their conversation skills.
Learning about civic discourse is more than just government, politics and voting. It’s about building community and learning valuable skills — communications, critical thinking, disagreeing in a civil way — that will help students at home, at work, and throughout their lives.
Emily Stacey is a Professor of Political Science at Rose State College.
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Our Democracy Is a Beast, When It Should Be a Buffalo
Sep 27, 2026
The Fulcrum is committed to nurturing the next generation of journalists.
We asked Alejo Cruz, a Fall Fulcrum Fellow, to share what democracy means to him and how he sees its current health.
Every election cycle, we the people are subject to different takes on democracy. It’s essentially become America’s favorite mad-lib — each new phrase stitches something new onto the idea of democracy for the people to rationalize in their minds. Democracy is [x], democracy is [y]. But the word “democracy” was originally a byproduct of two concepts. The root words being “demos,” meaning “the common people” and “kratos” meaning “power/rule”. The word itself is simple, yet the idea has become complex… and beastly.
Democracy does not need another definition; It doesn’t need another pundit, politician, or podcaster to overcomplicate it. Just as poets cannot debate their interpretation of a poem before agreeing on its prose, new interpretations of democracy will keep misdirecting discussion unless we agree on what democracy means. By minimizing democracy to its simplest terms, we can then begin to make sense of our differences. By cutting away the connotations that have turned “democracy” into a beast of a word, we learn the debate is not with democracy itself. But rather with the people it governs.
The beast created by ancient Athens was a simple creature. Combined, democracy meant that the common people have power. Every other characteristic we associate with democracy (i.e., electoralism, liberalism, egalitarianism) was added after years of people trying to make sense of the word. That’s not to say that these characteristics are invalid– equal rights, individual freedoms, and free and fair elections have been the basis on which American progress has been founded. These are the cornerstones of our democracy that make the United States so desirable.
But American democracy has been reduced to a chimera, with each generation of politicians stitching a new part onto a beast so distorted it exists for us as a distant dream.
Somewhere along the line, democracy became more of an idea rather than a practice.
Disillusioned, the American people don’t know what to make of a beast with the ears of a donkey, the trunk of an elephant, and the wings of an eagle, all stitched onto the body of a buffalo we were told could fly.
As the U.S. grew, so did our democracy. Westward expansion gave our beast the arms of a grizzly and tail of a scorpion, turning our democracy into the stuff of legends. But in creating a powerful democracy, we gave life to a beast that is a mere echo of what we had at the start. Unrecognizable and ravenous, we’ve set our democracy loose on the world — and it’s out for blood. From the jungles of Latin America to the islands of Southeast Asia, we’ve let the beast roam free under the pretense of spreading “democracy.”
The American chimera is sick and hungry. But how do we, as a nation, feed the beast? How do we satiate the democracy we so quickly defend? And how will we justify creating a creature that consumes without end? We feed it our tired, our poor; turning our backs on the homeless with barbed wire at the door.
All that to say that our democracy is not well. One can point to our civil rights, liberties, and elections and claim that our democracy remains robust. But how can a country pride itself on a system that gives power to the people, when its people are at the mercy of power? Instead, the power has been consolidated amongst the ones with the time and resources to participate.
Participation is a prerequisite to a sound democracy, yet it’s taken historic political polarization in the U.S. for voter turnout to rise. And even at our peak, elections have only reached about two-thirds of the American population. And while that may be cause for celebration, whose voices are being left out of the conversation? Who are the Americans being fed this idea of democracy, but hunger for something of sustenance?
An overworked mother may “have” the resources, but little time. An unhoused man may “have” time, but little resources. How are either expected to participate in a democracy that does not consider them members of the people Capitol Hill is supposed to represent? It’s far too easy for the opposition to blame those who have not had the privilege of participating in democracy. Lack of civic engagement is often framed as a personal shortcoming, rather than a systemic issue. But as someone who has watched my mother be drained of her youth and my father stripped of his humanity, no one can convince me that their existence is a flaw in our democracy. When it is our flawed democracy that has neglected their existence.
We’ve reached a point in our democracy where people are priced out of power. And that’s because those in power do not view certain Americans as the people our government is meant to represent. The beast we’ve created feeds on the marginalized to protect those that can afford to be regarded as people. It’s time we strip the beast of its power and see it for what it is: a fantasy. If we are to cure our democracy of its ailments, we must reduce it back to its simplest terms. America must return to the buffalo and begin again.
Alejo Cruz is a student at Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. Cruz draws on his experience growing up in an immigrant household and his reporting with unhoused people and asylum seekers to center human rights and community voices in his journalism, a commitment he hopes to deepen through solutions‑focused reporting with The Fulcrum.
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California’s 22nd District and the Myth of the Predictable Voter
Sep 27, 2026
For years, I thought California’s Central Valley presented one of the more puzzling electorates I encountered as a public-opinion researcher.
I conducted dozens of surveys throughout the Valley, including communities that would eventually become parts of David Valadao’s congressional districts. One pattern was difficult to miss. Democratic registration, particularly among Latino voters, often suggested a considerably more Democratic electorate than appeared on Election Day. Participation was uneven, and Latino Democratic registration did not translate into equivalent electoral strength.
By 2016, I was describing Valadao’s district publicly as “a mystery to everyone who has ever looked at it.” It had a large Latino population and a substantial Democratic registration advantage, yet it continued electing a Republican to Congress.
Even then, however, there were signs that the mystery might lie less with the voters than with how outsiders understood them. I had seen in my own survey work that Democratic registration and Latino population did not translate automatically into Democratic votes. I had also come to believe that Central Valley political identity could not simply be inferred from the partisan and demographic categories that described the district on paper.
A decade later, I am less certain that the voters were ever mysterious.
Perhaps our categories were.
The myth of a single Latino electorate
In LatinoLand, Marie Arana begins a discussion she calls “the myth of the Latino vote” with Ronald Reagan’s famous suggestion that Hispanics were Republicans who simply did not know it yet.
Democrats have sometimes behaved as though the reverse were true.
Both assumptions ask ethnicity to predict political behavior more reliably than it does. Latino voters differ by national origin, generation, occupation, religion, education, income, geography and political experience.
My experience in the Central Valley suggested another distinction that is equally important:
The population is not the electorate.
A heavily Latino district may not produce an equally Latino electorate. Democratic registration advantages do not guarantee Democratic voting, and presidential preferences do not necessarily extend down-ballot.
Population, citizenship, registration, likely-voter status, actual turnout and candidate choice represent different stages in the political process. Treating them as interchangeable can make understandable election results appear mysterious.
For years, Democratic strategists could look at registration and demographics and see the components of a durable Democratic constituency. Republicans could look at actual election results and see something different.
Both were observing real political facts. They were simply not observing the same electorate.
A politician who kept violating the forecast
David Valadao’s career provides an unusually useful case.
He first won election to the California Assembly in 2010 and an open congressional seat two years later. He was reelected in 2014 and 2016.
Then came 2018.
Democrat TJ Cox defeated him by only 862 votes amid the national Democratic wave that transferred roughly 40 House seats and control of the chamber to Democrats. Two years later Valadao returned and defeated Cox, who by then had the advantage of congressional incumbency.
Since beginning his elective career in 2010, that 2018 race remains Valadao’s only general-election defeat.
Consider 2016. Hillary Clinton carried the old 21st Congressional District with 55.2% of the vote to Donald Trump’s 39.7% — a margin of 15.5 points. On the same Election Day, Valadao defeated Democrat Emilio Huerta 56.7% to 43.3%.
A district that preferred the Democratic presidential candidate by more than 15 points simultaneously returned a Republican congressman by more than 13 points.
Aggregate returns cannot reveal how much of the divergence came from crossover voting, turnout differences or ballot roll-off. But they establish something important: presidential partisanship was an exceptionally poor predictor of the congressional outcome.
The 2018 loss is revealing for another reason. It is sometimes remembered as evidence that Democrats finally discovered how to mobilize the Central Valley electorate. Democratic organizations certainly worked to increase participation among Latino and younger voters.
Yet Cox received roughly as many votes as Huerta had received two years earlier. Much of the decisive movement occurred on Valadao’s side of the ledger during an exceptional national Democratic year.
From my experience studying Central Valley elections, I have always regarded Cox’s victory less as proof that Democrats had solved the Valadao problem than as evidence that the political environment of 2018 was finally strong enough to push a Democrat narrowly across the line.
Then came 2020. Cox was now the incumbent. Democrats controlled the House. Joe Biden carried the district comfortably.
Valadao won anyway.
Without the normal advantage of incumbency, he reclaimed a district whose voters preferred the Democratic presidential nominee. Across those elections, presidential partisanship, incumbency and even a national wave repeatedly failed to predict Valadao’s congressional performance.
The question is why.
The politician who looks like the place
National political journalism frequently describes Valadao as a moderate or pragmatic Republican. Those descriptions capture part of his appeal, but perhaps not the most important part.
Valadao’s biography is unusually legible in the Central Valley. He was born and raised in Hanford, graduated from the local high school, attended community college and entered his family’s dairy and farming business. Agriculture and water are not abstractions in his political biography. They are the economic world from which he came.
None of this makes Valadao an independent disguised as a Republican. He has operated comfortably within Republican politics and was closely associated with neighboring Central Valley Republican Kevin McCarthy.
But he has also supplied voters with visible evidence that his party identification does not determine every political decision. Most dramatically, after returning to Congress in 2021, Valadao became one of only 10 House Republicans to vote to impeach Donald Trump after January 6.
That did not transform him into a Never-Trump Republican. With Trump again in the White House, Valadao says he communicates with the president and works with the administration.
That combination is more interesting than the label “centrist.” Valadao remains institutionally connected to his party while maintaining a strong local identity. He does not have to explain why agriculture matters to him or convince voters that he understands the economic culture of the southern San Joaquin Valley.
His biography makes the argument for him.
When local identity resists nationalization
There is a useful historical comparison.
For years, Mississippi Democrat Gene Taylor represented a congressional district that voted strongly Republican for president while continuing to send him to Congress by large margins. Taylor developed a local political identity partly independent of the national Democratic Party. Eventually national partisan sorting overwhelmed it, and he lost in the Republican wave of 2010.
Valadao presents something resembling the partisan mirror image. The comparison is not ideological. It is structural.
Both cases ask the same question:
How long can voters maintain a distinction between their judgment of a national political party and their judgment of someone they regard as their local representative?
Valadao’s career suggests that nationalization may be powerful without being complete.
The Valleycrat solution
Central Valley Democrats developed their own response to the region’s political culture. There is even a name for it: the “Valleycrat.”
The term, attributed to former Assembly Speaker and Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante, came to describe Democrats willing to depart from their state or national party on questions such as agriculture, water, oil and taxes when they believed Valley interests required it.
But Valleycrat has always communicated more than a set of issue positions. It expresses regional identity.
Bakersfield is not Los Angeles. Fresno is not San Francisco. A Valleycrat could therefore communicate something politically useful:
I am a Democrat, but I am a Valley Democrat.
The strategy rests on a plausible theory of the electorate. Democratic registration has historically overstated Democratic Election Day performance. A Democrat therefore seeks crossover voters by emphasizing ideological moderation, local concerns and some distance from the national party.
Rudy Salas represented that tradition when he challenged Valadao in 2022 and 2024. Jasmeet Bains represented another version of it in the 2026 Democratic primary.
National Democrats initially concluded that this remained the best formula.
When Washington chose a candidate
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee intervened in the 2026 primary on behalf of Bains.
The reasoning was conventional. In a highly competitive district, a moderate Democrat with an established legislative record appeared better positioned to win swing voters against an unusually durable Republican incumbent.
But Democratic leaders in Kern, Tulare, Fresno and Kings counties backed Randy Villegas and objected publicly to Washington’s intervention. What national strategists regarded as an electability decision could be interpreted locally as an outside institution deciding what kind of Democrat the Valley should nominate.
Republicans made almost precisely the same calculation from the opposite direction.
A super PAC aligned with House Republican leadership spent money portraying Villegas as a left-wing progressive who was too extreme for the Central Valley. The unusual intervention was widely interpreted as an effort to raise his visibility among Democratic primary voters, reflecting a Republican calculation that a progressive nominee would make for a more favorable general-election matchup.
The symmetry was striking. National Democrats preferred Bains because they thought a moderate would be harder for Valadao to beat. National Republicans appeared to prefer Villegas because they thought a progressive would be easier.
Democratic primary voters chose Villegas anyway.
That does not prove the national parties were wrong. It gives November a more interesting test.
A different theory of the electorate
Villegas is particularly interesting because his biography and scholarship suggest a theory of Central Valley politics different from the traditional Valleycrat approach.
He was born and raised in Bakersfield, attended Bakersfield College and CSU Bakersfield, left to earn a doctorate in politics at UC Santa Cruz, and then returned to the Valley to teach political science and serve on a local school board.
His dissertation, Voices from the Valley of Vulnerability, examined political participation among young people from mixed-status families in Kern and Fresno counties. His argument was that local contexts could constrain political engagement while community organizations and youth organizing groups could serve as bridges to participation.
That is remarkably relevant to the electoral problem Democrats have faced in the Valley.
There is no basis for claiming that Villegas constructed his congressional strategy from his dissertation. A dissertation is not a campaign plan. But the parallel is difficult to ignore.
The traditional Valleycrat strategy attempts to adapt the Democratic candidate to the electorate that turns out.
Villegas may be attempting something different:
changing the electorate that turns out.
His national associations with Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Working Families Party make it difficult to present him simply as another centrist Valley Democrat. His campaign instead emphasizes economic populism, working families, grassroots organizing and local roots.
Whether that strategy works depends on an unforgiving distinction:
Registration is not turnout.
A Democratic advantage on paper matters only if those Democrats become voters. Villegas therefore has to do more than demonstrate that a favorable electorate exists. He has to help produce that electorate on Election Day.
The contrast leaves several explanations in play. The Valleycrat approach emphasizes adaptation and crossover persuasion; Villegas places greater weight on mobilization; Valadao’s history points to the additional power of candidate-specific and local identity. These mechanisms can operate together, and an election result alone cannot tell us which mattered most.
Local identity in a nationalized election
The contrast between Valadao and Villegas is more subtle than “moderate Republican versus progressive Democrat.”
Both can legitimately claim Central Valley roots, but they embody different relationships to the place.
Valadao represents something close to continuous embeddedness: Hanford, community college, dairy farming, agricultural institutions and Valley politics.
Villegas represents departure and return: Bakersfield, local colleges, graduate education outside the region, scholarly study of Valley political participation, and then a return to teaching and public service.
Neither biography is inherently more authentic. But both candidates must prevent national political identities from overwhelming their local ones.
Valadao must persuade voters that being a Republican congressman does not make him interchangeable with Donald Trump or every position of the national Republican Party. His impeachment vote provides unusually credible evidence for that claim.
Villegas faces the reverse problem. Republicans will have every incentive to make Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and the national progressive movement define him rather than his Central Valley career.
The race therefore asks the same question of both candidates:
When national party labels and local political identities point in different directions, which one do voters use to make sense of the candidate?
The electorate is not fixed
This may be the broader lesson of the race.
Campaign professionals commonly speak of “the electorate” as though it were a population waiting to be measured.
It is not. The electorate is partly produced by politics.
Who registers, who becomes attentive, who is contacted, who is mobilized and who eventually casts a ballot all help determine the electorate that appears.
Persuasion asks how to win the electorate likely to vote; mobilization asks whether the electorate itself can be changed.
Neither approach is inherently superior. But they are different theories of campaigning.
The uncertainty surrounding Latino political behavior makes the distinction particularly relevant. Campaign professionals increasingly describe Latino voters not as a uniform partisan constituency but as regionally diverse and persuadable. The industry has become extraordinarily sophisticated at identifying and reaching Latino voters at the same moment that it has become less certain what the category “Latino voter” actually predicts.
That is why the Cox election matters. If 2018 is interpreted simply as proof that Democrats permanently unlocked a latent majority in the district, Valadao’s 2020 return becomes difficult to explain. If instead 2018 is understood as the interaction of an extraordinary national environment with a distinctive local electorate, the sequence becomes more coherent.
Why CA-22 now matters nationally
The puzzle has become sharper in 2026. California’s new congressional map made Valadao’s district more favorable to Democrats by conventional measures. Democrats now hold roughly a 16-point registration advantage, while a district Donald Trump carried by about six points in 2024 would have given him an advantage of less than two points under the new boundaries. The political arithmetic that has long made Valadao’s survival look improbable has moved still further against his party.
That makes the district an unusually useful test of the argument running through this history. The national parties can measure registration, turnout probabilities, precinct behavior and demographics with precision unimaginable to the campaigns I worked on decades ago.
But what does that information explain?
It can identify a registered Democrat and estimate whether that person is likely to vote. It is much harder to measure whether a voter regards a dairy farmer from Hanford as “one of us,” or whether a professor from Visalia can persuade a marginal voter that participation is worth the effort.
Those factors can be studied. But they are not interchangeable with the variables we most easily measure.
What November can — and cannot — tell us
If Villegas wins, it will be tempting to announce that progressivism has discovered a new formula for the Central Valley.
That would go beyond the evidence.
A victory could result from changed district boundaries, stronger Democratic turnout, the national environment, economic conditions, campaign spending, persuasion, mobilization, dissatisfaction with Republicans or some combination of them.
If Valadao wins, it will be equally tempting to declare that the Valleycrat theory was right and that Villegas was simply too liberal.
That conclusion would also require evidence.
Perhaps Democratic turnout remained depressed. Perhaps Valadao again attracted voters who supported Democrats elsewhere. Perhaps his agricultural and local identity remained unusually powerful. Perhaps voters rejected Villegas ideologically. Or perhaps national conditions shifted.
Election results tell us who won. They do not automatically tell us why.
Perhaps the model is the anomaly
For decades, politicians, pollsters and journalists have classified voters using categories that are valuable precisely because they simplify an extraordinarily complicated electorate: Latino or white, Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, presidential voter or midterm voter.
The trouble begins when description becomes explanation.
Arana’s challenge to the idea of a single Latino vote, the Valleycrat tradition, Gene Taylor’s resistance to partisan nationalization and Villegas’s work on political participation all point toward the same conclusion. So does my experience surveying Central Valley voters and Valadao’s remarkable electoral career: the categories we use to describe an electorate do not necessarily explain how that electorate behaves.
For years, David Valadao appeared to violate the political characteristics of his constituency.
Perhaps he did not.
Perhaps ethnicity, registration, turnout, presidential preference, ideology and attachment to a local candidate simply measure different dimensions of political behavior — and we created the contradiction by expecting them to measure the same thing.
If so, California’s 22nd Congressional District is not really a story about unpredictable voters.
It is a story about the limits of the models we use to predict them.
California’s 22nd District and the Myth of the Predictable Voter was first published by California Latino News and is republished with permission.
Kent C. Price is a retired Professor of Political Science.
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