The Mad Libs Candidate: Polling the Perfect Democrat, No Assembly Required

If you stitched together the top-testing bio, record, and issue priorities across each audience, you’d get something like: “This Democrat is a working-class veteran who has spent their career guided by science, evidence, and facts, created jobs in the private sector, and believes in finding common ground. They’re running on protecting Social Security and Medicare, bringing down the prices of food and goods, and making healthcare more affordable.”

November 14, 2025

If you could build a Democratic candidate in a lab—a mad scientist, FDA-approved, poll-tested laboratory—what would that person look like?

Using a “Mad Libs” style conjoint test, we presented dozens of potential bio facts, records, and issue priorities to understand what meaningfully moves a “generic Democrat’s” favorability. The result is a map of the traits, life choices, and policy focuses that voters reward—and the ones that sink them from the starting gate.

It is a blueprint for the ideal candidate—one who, realistically speaking, has probably never existed and likely never will, but it signals what works and what doesn’t (and we can dream). But the big picture from our “Mad Libs”: voters want a straight-shooter who worries about prices and has probably worn steel-toe boots.

The charts below illustrate the preference effects across voters overall, Democrats, and independents.

Across Democratic and independent voters, the ideal Democrat is:

“Real Life” Economically: middle-class, working-class, or a blue-collar worker (+8 / +8 / +7 preference effect among all voters)
A Relatable Record: a veteran, small business owner, or someone who has done a regular job people can visualize
Culturally Boring in a reassuring way: moderate (+4), under 50 but not aggressively online, speaks plainly (a podcaster has a -9 preference effect)
Focused on affordability: bringing down the prices of food, goods, and services has a whopping preference effect of +20 among all voters, +18 among independents, +23 among Democrats
Deeply suspicious of culture-war detours: a focus on Israel/Palestine, student loans, and climate action sink preference effect.

THE “PERFECT” MAD LIBS CANDIDATE

If you stitched together the top-testing bio, record, and issue priorities across each audience, you’d get something like:

“This Democrat is a working-class veteran who has spent their career guided by science, evidence, and facts, created jobs in the private sector, and believes in finding common ground. They’re running on protecting Social Security and Medicare, bringing down the prices of food and goods, and making healthcare more affordable.”

Combined Effect: +35 points

You can hear the bonus points racking up in just a short couple of sentences.

THE WORD BANK: WHAT WORKS, WHAT DOESN’T

Who They Should Be (Bio Facts)

All Voters: Working-class (+8), veteran (+8), and middle-class (+8%) credentials provide the biggest lift. Professor (+3), farmer (+2), and attorney (+2) also move the needle in the right direction.

Democrats: Middle-class (+10) and working-class (+8) resonate most, and veterans get +7.

Independents: Veterans (+8) and working-class (+7) lead, followed by professors (+6) and young people under 50 (+6%). Independents respond to non-traditional politician credentials more than other groups.

The Universal Truth: No one wants a billionaire (all voters -11, Democrats -18, independents -8%) or someone whose biography is centered on being a socialist (all voters -11, Dems -5, independents -9). A CEO is also a liability across all groups (-3 to -5). Journalists (sorry, guys) are consistently unpopular (-3 to -4).

What They Should Say They’ve Done (Record)

All Voters: Being guided by science, evidence, and facts (+7) is the single most persuasive aspect of one’s record. Bipartisanship (+3), creating private-sector jobs (+6), and finding common ground (+7) all work. Notably, being a “lifelong public servant” only gets +2.

Democrats: Science and facts still wins (+9), but serving in the Obama administration (+6) is the second-most compelling—a partisan callback that works for the party base. Finding common ground (+5) and creating jobs (+5) round out the top performers.

Independents: Science, facts, and bipartisanship are virtually tied as the strongest selling points (+8 and +5 respectively). Independents uniquely respond to being a “political outsider fighting against the Democratic Party establishment” (+5)—essentially, Democrats should be willing to buck their party with this group.

What They Should Campaign On (Issues)

This is where consensus emerges:

Protecting Social Security and Medicare is an overwhelming winner. It’s the single best-performing issue across every group:

All Voters: +21
Democrats: +23
Independents: +18

Bringing Down Prices of Food, Goods, and Services is the second universal winner:

All Voters: +20
Democrats: +18
Independents: +18

Making Healthcare and Prescription Drugs More Affordable rounds out the top three everywhere:

All Voters: +16
Democrats: +23
Independents: +14

Other reliably strong issues include making housing more affordable (+10 all, +8 Dems, +14 independents) and fighting corruption in politics (+10 all, +6 Dems, +11 independents).

THE INDEPENDENT SWING

Independents deserve their own analysis because they’re a different creature entirely:

What uniquely appeals to them: Bipartisanship gets a bigger boost with independents than Democrats (+5 versus +0). Being an outsider against the Democratic establishment appeals to independents (+5) but actively drags with Democrats (-5).
What doesn’t do as well: LGBTQ rights are less compelling to independents (-18) than Democrats (-6). Palestine/Israel both drag harder with independents.
Where they align with the whole: Social Security, prices, and healthcare are universal winners, but the lifts are slightly smaller—suggesting independents are less enthusiastic across the board but consistent in their priorities.

And if you placed this Build-A-Dem workshopped candidate into generative AI, they might resemble something like this:

ABOUT THE POLL

Blueprint surveyed an online sample of 3,028 voters from September 19 to September 24, weighted to age, education, gender, race, survey engagement, and 2024 election results. The survey was conducted in English, and its margin of error is ±2.1 percentage points.

PRESS CONTACTS

Alyssa Cass
alyssa@slingshotstrat.com
347-992-5006

Evan Roth Smith
evan@slingshotstrat.com
646-240-0096