The New York Times on Sunday, in a story titled “Democrats in Split-Screen: The Base Wants It All. The Party Wants to Win,” described a “growing tension between the party’s ascendant militant wing and Democrats competing in conservative-leaning terrain.” The reporters, Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin, cited Senator Bernie Sanders as a leader of the former group and Georgia congressional candidate Jon Ossoff as representative of the latter. At one point, the piece referenced “tension between Mr. Ossoff’s message and the appetites of the national Democratic base.”

Hours after the Times article was published, FiveThirtyEight statistician Nate Silver took issue with such framing, igniting a Twitter debate over who, exactly, comprises the Democratic “base.” This may seem like a matter of semantics to some, but to others it’s a loaded term whose definition has real implications for the future of the Democratic Party—not just in courting new voters, but in not taking for granted its longtime supporters.

Arguably—given that she won the Democratic primaries by a healthy margin—Clinton had more base support. Mostly women. Mostly nonwhite. — Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) June 11, 2017

The Times was hardly the first publication to substitute Sanders supporters for Democratic base voters. In an article about Senate Democrats last month, the Huffington Post made reference to “their restless progressive base, which would like to see the party embrace Sanders-style economic populism.” But as National Journal politics editor Josh Kraushaar‏ observed on Sunday, Hillary Clinton actually tied Sanders in last year’s primary among voters who called themselves “very liberal.” (She won “somewhat liberal” and “moderate” voters by big margins.)

If you define D base as "very liberal," Dems divided in 2016 primaries. Sanders 49.9%, Clinton 49.8% https://t.co/CQ0HH3vcav https://t.co/CJIF85gYK9 — Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) June 12, 2017

That Wall Street Journal analysis of the 2016 Democratic primary is strong evidence against the claim that Sanders, who isn’t even a registered Democrat, represents the party base. As the Journal noted, “Sanders won big margins among independents who cast ballots in Democratic contests. But he lost Democratic Party members by close to 30 percentage points.”



“If you’re talking about the Democratic Party base, it’s actually kind of more of a Clinton base,” Silver said on a FiveThirtyEight podcast on Monday. “If you’re talking about liberal activists or progressive activists, it’s a slightly different connotation.”