Think Tank Says National Leftward Turn Could Ruin Democratic Party

National think tank Third Way says the Democratic Party faces “renewal or ruin” depending on whether it follows a centrist model or embraces a national version of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s left-wing strategy.

In the analysis, published Nov. 25, Third Way compares how New Jersey Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill, Virginia Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger, and Mamdani each won more than 50 percent of the vote in their 2025 races, then models what their different coalitions would mean if replicated in presidential and Senate contests nationwide.

The advocacy organization says lawmakers from the Democratic Party must choose between making “blue places bluer,” which it describes as the mission of the “far left,” and flipping red and purple areas that currently keep the party in the minority in the House, Senate, and Electoral College.

The memo focuses on self-identified moderates, arguing that victories by the Democratic Party at the national level almost always require winning a supermajority of these voters.

Third Way notes that since 1980, Democrats have captured the White House only once without such a margin among moderates and says even that outlier year saw President Barack Obama win 56 percent of them.

By contrast, the memo says Mamdani won just 36 percent of self-identified moderates in his race, while Sherrill won 62 percent and Spanberger won 69 percent, both described as supermajorities that clear what Third Way calls a crucial 60 percent mark for a national nominee. The group argues that candidates who win what it calls the “battle of reasonableness” with these voters put the party “in the strongest position to defeat MAGA.”

Third Way then projects those three moderate-vote shares across every state for both presidential and Senate races.

In a “Sherrill-like” scenario, where a Democratic presidential candidate and Senate nominees all win 62 percent of moderates in each state, the memo projects Democrats would win 292 electoral college votes and 48 Senate seats.

In a “Spanberger scenario,” with Democrats winning 69 percent of moderates across the board, the group projects a 349 electoral college votes and a 54–46 Senate majority.

Those outcomes represent the “renewal” side of the memo’s title. The “ruin” side comes from modeling a national map built on Mamdani’s more left-leaning coalition.

If a presidential nominee and Senate candidates from the party each matched Mamdani’s 36 percent support among moderates in every state, Third Way projects a 507–31 electoral college loss for the Democratic Party.

Under that scenario, the party’s lawmakers would only carry Maryland, Massachusetts, Vermont, Hawaii, and Washington, and would be left with four governorships and eight Senate seats nationwide, the memo says.

The group frames that outcome as “one path to ruin” for the party and argues it would be “the easiest way to ensure Trumpism spreads and thrives” by nominating a candidate “incompatible with the views and values of moderate swing voters.”

The Epoch Times reached out to Mamdani for comment, but did not receive a response by publication time.

Beyond the numbers, Third Way warns about what it calls the “political danger” if “the loudest, most organized, best-financed voices in the tent are the far-left rather than the center.”

It points to President Bill Clinton and Obama as examples of leaders who managed “a broad coalition and won” from “the center-out, not the left-in.”

The memo closes with a call for “dynamic, pugnacious centrists” to lead the Democratic Party ticket in the “right districts and states” and eventually at the top of the presidential ballot. Otherwise, Third Way argues, lawmakers from the Democratic Party will “reinforce Republican attacks that we are the extremists, and we will lose,” leaving the party out of power in Washington as Republicans define the terms of debate.