Excerpts from the accompanying text

Roughly a quarter of Democrats count as ideologically consistent progressives, who toe the party line or something further to the left on just about every issue. Only a portion of them, perhaps 1 in 10 Democrats over all, might identify as Democratic socialists, based on recent polls.

This along with a useful color-coded state map illustration (that isn't in copy-able form) titled  Where the rest of the Democratic Party lives/Moderates, passive liberals and disengaged voters as a share of all Democrats

The rest of the party is easy to miss. Not only is it less active on social media, but it is also under-represented in the well-educated, urban enclaves where journalists roam. It is under-represented in the Northern blue states and districts where most Democratic politicians win elections.

Many in this group are party stalwarts: people who are Democrats because of identity and self-interest — a union worker, an African-American — more than their policy views. Their votes are concentrated in the South, where Democratic politicians rarely win.

Nonwhite voters, particularly black voters, are a major driver of this geographic split. Black voters represent around 20 percent of the Democratic electorate nationwide and a majority of Democrats in the Deep South. Mr. Obama’s strength among black voters allowed him to defeat the establishment favorite candidate (Mrs. Clinton) in 2008, in contrast with prior progressive candidates.

The rest of the party poses a challenge for more progressive candidates, and it’s not just about this group’s moderate views.

Less engaged and less ideological voters tend to be cynical about politics. One might think cynicism would translate to support for outsider candidates, and it probably could against an establishment favorite with enough flaws. Instead, it has more often meant skepticism of ambitious, idealistic, pie-in-the-sky liberals and progressives who offer big promises with no record. It has meant an appreciation for well-known, battle-tested politicians who have been on their side or even delivered in the past. This election cycle, Mr. Biden might be the beneficiary of such sentiment.

This group’s lower levels of news consumption mean fewer opportunities for the activist-backed candidates to make their case. A majority of such voters might not even have an opinion about Ms. Ocasio-Cortez (over all, only around half of Democrats do in recent polls). Their weaker ideological predilections mean these voters are often less likely to buy the message, even if it reaches them [....]

This embedded link is interesting, a post election NYTimes piece I missed about the entire electorate:

NEWS ANALYSIS These Americans Are Done With Politics

The Exhausted Majority needs a break.

By Sabrina Tavernise @ NYTimes.com, Nov. 17, 2018

[....] It would be easy to conclude that all of America is hopelessly divided — a land where two angry tribes are at each other’s throats and everybody thinks about politics all the time.

But the reality is far less extreme.

A deep new study of the American electorate, “Hidden Tribes,” concludes that two out of three Americans are far more practical than that narrative suggests. Most do not see their lives through a political lens, and when they have political views the views are far less rigid than those of the highly politically engaged, ideologically orthodox tribes.

The study, an effort to understand the forces that drive political polarization, surveyed a representative group of 8,000 Americans. The nonpartisan organization that did it, More in Common, paints a picture of a society that is far more disengaged — and despairing over divisions — than it is divided. At its heart is a vast and often overlooked political middle that feels forgotten in the vitriol, as if the country has gone on without it. It calls that group the Exhausted Majority, a group that represented two-thirds of the survey.

“It feels very lonely out here,” said Jamie McDaniel, a 36-year-old home health care worker in Topeka, Kan., one of several people in the study who was interviewed for this article. “Everybody is so right or left, and you’re just kind of standing there in the middle saying, “What happened?’” [....]