Jim Kessler and Lanae Erickson-Hatalsky

Opinion contributors

Political elites are in a lather about how the left has taken over the Democratic Party. Maybe someone should tell the voters.

In Alabama, self-described "center of the road" Democrat Doug Jones scored a shocking win over the embattled Roy Moore by turning out African-Americans and winning moderate voters by a three-to-one margin, according to exit polls. Sure, deep red Alabama and the peculiarities of that race may make any national lessons for Democrats a bit suspect, but how do these political elites explain what happened in Virginia where once again, voters in a contested Democratic primary chose the moderate Democrat over the more liberal candidate? We say “once again” because the same thing happened repeatedly in the primaries of 2016.

In deep blue Maryland, Chris Van Hollen easily outpaced the liberal Donna Edwards. In purple Florida, Patrick Murphy trounced firebrand Alan Grayson. In contested House races in Florida, Maryland, and Nevada, the more centrists of Darren Soto, Anthony Brown, and Jacky Rosen all cruised past primary opponents endorsed by national progressive organizations representing the far left.

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And of course, there was the 2016 Democratic presidential primary race itself. Sen. Bernie Sanders may have over-performed expectations, but he still lost by nearly 4 million votes. And where Sanders generally did best was in the 17 Democratic caucus contests in which the voting process is designed to favor participation by activists.

That carries us back to old Virginia, where moderate voters got the last word. That wasn’t the story-line going into the Commonwealth’s primaries, where the left was going to finally notch a win in 2017 at the precise moment when the nation was watching. But the moderate Ralph Northam didn’t just beat liberal hero Tom Perriello, it was a 12-point stunner.

To be clear, this was not the expected outcome according to virtually any analyst who got paid to follow and prognosticate on the race. Running as a bold and proud populist, Perriello — a former congressman — was well-known, well-financed, young, energetic, and intelligent. And he boasted a national network of passionate supporters through his endorsement by Bernie Sanders.

On the other side was the “genteel” Northam, whom the chattering class said was out of sync with the politics of today. Voters no longer yearned for a steady and serious mainstream moderate who spoke to the electorate rather than shouted. That’s what the pundits said until about three minutes after the polls closed and the outcome was already obvious.

So what are the experts who see a far left takeover of the Democratic Party missing? They are confusing volume (loudness) with volume (numbers). The activist left has done a tremendous job of keeping up a drumbeat against President Trump and of organizing movements behind several liberal policy ideas. They are an indispensable part of the Democratic Party. But the fact remains that once in the voting booth, the ballots of those who shout and those who whisper count the same. Moderates tend to whisper.

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And as it turns out, there are far more voters in contested political places like Virginia who whisper than shout. That’s a fact according to exit polls, where 42% of the Virginia general electorate self-identified as moderate compared to 27% who called themselves liberal and 31% conservative. Based on our calculations from those exit polls, if only votes of liberals and conservatives were counted, the Republican Ed Gillespie would have won the governorship by roughly 50,000 votes. Northam won by scoring an overwhelming 64%-33% win among moderates — a vote margin of over 300,000.

Looking forward, these quiet voices may be more influential, not less, in coming elections. New research out of Stanford shows why candidates on the extreme ends of the partisan spectrum do worse than moderates in elections: They struggle to galvanize support across the spectrum in their own party while also inciting the opposing party’s base to turn out. If off-year elections are a referendum on the president, both Virginia and Alabama showed that voters did not want a blue version of Donald Trump. They went for the candidates that turned down the volume, not the ones most likely to match the president tweet for tweet. And true blue progressives should be heartened because moderate and quiet doesn’t mean any less anger about Trump or less passionate support for broad change. Still waters run deep.

The challenge for Democrats (and for the media that cover them) is to distinguish the quiet voices that will decide primary and general elections from the loud voices which can dominate the debate. Don’t write off moderate candidates, because voters certainly haven’t. Such is the power of the quiet voice at the ballot box.

Jim Kessler is senior vice president for policy and Lanae Erickson-Hatalsky is vice president for social policy and politics at Third Way. Follow them on Twitter: @ThirdWayKessler and @LanaeErickson