Okay, I’m not a political scientist, but my understanding is that parties maximize their votes by appealing to the center. A center-right politician, for example, automatically captures all extreme right voters; It’s not like a right wing extremist is going to suddenly vote for a leftist candidate because the right’s candidate was insufficiently extreme. So if a candidate panders to the extreme side of the spectrum they cede the majority centrist voters to the more moderate opponent.
This confuses me because I see the Republican party growing progressively more extreme as the voters appear to grow more leftist. This year didn’t have many moderate candidates, but they quickly got shut out by blatant sociopaths like Christie, Cruz, and Trump. At times it seemed like the candidates were fighting over whose platform was most extreme.
I get that the primaries are intended for the party’s internal consumption and primary voters are by definition the hard core party base. But the primaries are just one example of an overall Republican trend towards extremism that has been in progress for decades. The Republican platform amendments, for example, are positively draconian and appear to be precisely opposite the trend of voters desires and Supreme Court decisions. For example: While support for gay rights has been growing for years, the Republicans just keep doubling down on opposition to gay rights… Even after the Supreme Court ruled against them. Or they know, as a fact, that America’s minority population is increasing and yet they appoint a candidate whose entire platform is racism and xenophobia.
So what is going on here? It seems to me that Republicans are only interested in pandering to the most extreme voices and the most extreme voters… Which is the exact opposite of how you traditionally win an election. Do they seriously expect that the American population is going to do a sudden about-face on gay rights and other issues? Do they actually believe that if they energize the extremists their votes will outnumber the centrists they cede to the Democrats? Or do they just not care about winning elections anymore?
I think that, for the time being anyway, those people that hold those extremist views are the country’s most reliable voters-- older, white, middle class or above, evangelical. Their population may be shrinking, but their presence on the voter rolls makes them more powerful than their numbers would otherwise indicate.
It seems the Republicans are going all-in on an aging demographic that holds beliefs that are less and less popular, but still motivate certain people to get out and vote. They can’t compete with the Dems for the middle anymore, but a lot of people in the middle and left don’t necessarily vote (at least in off-year elections-- which is why Republicans win state level races. Presidential races are sexier so more young people, minorities, etc. vote, which means Republicans have a harder time putting together a viable presidential campaign.)
I suspect the extreme platform is to attract those older, white, middle class or above, evangelical voters to down-ballot races in presidential year where more young, minority, secular voters are being engaged.
Note that, thanks to Republican gerrymandering turning fewer votes overall into more House seats won, it has worked pretty well in Congress during the last fifteen years or so – but not so well in presidential races (the exception being 2000, when a statistical tie ended up favoring the Republican, despite the Democrat having received more votes overall.)
Well it’s not just gerrymandering. In a lot of subnational races a more conservative stance is closer to the center.
BTW, I think this was first an economic theory. The way I remeber it explained was: imagine a one street town with two gas stations. If distance is the only consideration then the station closest to the middle gets more business so you end up with two gas stations in the middle of the street.
Another factor is money. While the voters may be more moderate than the average Republican, there are big money donors who are more conservative than the average Republican. So Republican candidates run to the right to collect money, which they then spend on ads to hopefully convince moderates to vote for them.
Im not sure why the Republicans are being singled out here. Im guessing it’s just the usual anti-Republican sentiment on the forum. The centre is crumbling throughout much of the Western world: we also saw the Democrats struggle to hold onto the centre this primary campaign. One more disappointing centrist Presidency, one more radical Dem push, and the centre of the Democratic Party crumbles. If you want to understand whats happening within Republican politics look to Europe and look to the Democratic Party. The American nation is not exceptional and neither are the Republican Party. They are all following roughly the same path as elsewhere in the world. The US may have it’s own idiosyncrasies, but it is on the same spectrum as the UK, France, Sweden and Australia.
In before the ‘well both parties do it’ equivalency. No, they do not. the GOP has moved further to the right than the dems have moved to the left. In fact 2016 with Sanders is the closest thing to an actual progressive in national politics I’ve seen in my lifetime. And Sanders is considered ‘center-left’ by western european standards, not far left. He is only far left by US standards. Also, ironically, 2016 may be the first presidential election where a candidate being too unhinged and extreme (Trump) actually costs them votes for the presidency. There were issues in previous elections where GOP candidates who should’ve won said things about rape that turned off enough people that the dems were able to win their seats.
I have no idea how the GOP keeps moving to the right while the electorate moves left. And I do think the electorate is moving left on many issues. Climate change and alternative energy, income inequality, police behavior, health care, sensible gun control, regulation of private industry, minimum wage, ending the drug war, etc. are all issues where the left is mostly gaining traction.
At the end of the day, most people will vote for whomever has an R or D next to their name in the presidential elections.
Supposedly income inequality tends to create more right wing politicians, but I do not understand the mechanism.
What’s going on is that there already is a party sitting pretty smack dab in the center and they show no inclination to move an inch, a “we mostly agree with the other guys” platform is not going to get you very far.
Several correct answers have been given. Another is that “undecided” voters are typically under-informed and apathetic. Making sure the “base” turns out to vote is what’s important. Finally, political differences do not fit into a single dimension. Both the left establishment and the right establishment are largely pro-trade so there is huge voter appetite for a non-establishment anti-trade anti-immigrant candidate.
Off-topic:
I’ve heard this posed as the N Ice Cream Vendors at the Beach ProblemWhen N=2, the first vendor places his cart near the 0.4999 point on a [0,1] scale normalized for customer convenience, and the other vendor takes 0.5001. But things are more interesting for larger N. When N=3, the first cart is set at .2499, the second cart at .7501. Third vendor gets only 25% of the traffic no matter where he places his cart, so will place it at 0.5000 to avoid making an enemy.
That was true at one time. Until relatively recently, both parties had liberal, moderate, and conservative wings. Their median points may have been different but if you plotted voters the majority were under the center of the curve, making them a tempting target. To see this, remember that no president during the lifetime of the Republican and Democratic Parties ever got more than 61% of the vote even in the largest landslides. Nor did losing candidates get under 40% except for major third party years. The perception - and I believe reality - was that gaining that shiftable 20% in the middle was the key to winning. Bill Clinton was probably the last true example.
The extremism of the Republican Party has changed that. Sorry, but both sides are not equal. We can see this in the Senate. Every Republican is today to the right of every Democrat, unimaginable in the days of the Rockefeller Republicans. The Republicans no longer have a liberal wing at all and the moderate wing is nearly extinct. Every faction is some flavor of extreme conservatism. There is no equivalent on the Democratic side. There are as few far-left Democrats in office as there are moderate Republicans. Sanders, remember, is an independent. No progressive wing yet exists, although one may emerge in the future.
Is it profitable to go after extreme voters? It sure can be. For one thing, extreme voters are not equally distributed geographically. If they are concentrated, it makes sense to out-extreme the next guy. (Same as in the economic theory if 90% of the voters suddenly moved to one side of the gas stations.) Red states have power because of concentrated conservative voters, sending more and more extreme conservatives to all offices below the presidential level.
The Presidency is the only office where a center-oriented policy might make sense today. That’s an unstable situation. It won’t last because the geographic odds that a perfectly balanced set of red states and blue states exist is an anomaly. Demographic factors will change that in the next decade. Over that time I expect politics to change because of shifting population concentrations and demographic changes.
Eventually, probably around 2028, a new center will appear at a median different from today’s. Until then, expect chaos.
Because there is no comparison. The Republican party used to be capable of polite disagreement. Over the years they have become progressively more extreme to the point where even rational discourse is now impossible. Hate radio plays a part, as does the Tea Party that favored radical obstruction of governance and actively punished anyone not sufficiently extreme in their policies. The new right that has emerged in the last decade or two is completely insane, and we are now watching them implode as a result.
The Democrats haven’t experienced the same phenomenon in any way, shape or form. Bill Clinton, Obama, and Hillary are all extremely moderate, rational, and sometimes even hawkish individuals. By any objective measure, the left has a more moderate platform while the right is increasingly draconian.
Honestly, who is the median voter? What views does that median voter have?
Given that presidential elections are usually decided by just a few percent I would be unsurprised to find out that the median voter is a bit more to the right along one or more axis than I and you might think.
In any case the group around the median are the swingables and every election is decided by who gets more of them balanced by who gets more turnout of those towards each of the other sides. More in the middle is not always the recipe for success if it depresses turnout of your own base.
In any case the GOP has a filter for candidates to get past in the primaries which consists of activists with more extreme positions and litmus tests.
This election isn’t like the last few. The median voter right now is undecided, and there are a ton of undecided voters, with neither major party candidate getting above 40% in the averages.
So who is this undecided voter? Probably a working class white male Democrat with moderate to conservative leanings.
This year isn’t quite like *any *other, not that I know of anyway.
Yes, it is of interest to figure out “Who are the undecideds?” It seems that more undecideds are hesitant Republicans than hesitant Democrats. Those undecided working class white male Democrat with moderate to conservative leanings are apparently outnumbered by college educated Whites who are uncomfortable with Trump and white women who are not college educated as well.
But I think the op is more about where candidates place themselves on the political axes and the dynamic between moving to the middle versus exciting the base. In that regard Trump is a different beast as despite the fact that OnTheIssues maps him as a moderate conservative, he is actually very extreme along some imaginary axis orthoganal to the plane of reality … and of course far to to authoritarian/fascist pole as well.
This has null meaning. A median is only possible along a range of values. There is no range in voting. A voter must pick from a small number of independent possibilities. That doesn’t give a median any more than picking from brown, silver, pink, and charcoal does.
Even if you falsely assume that voters align along a simple conservative-progressive scale, no evidence whatsoever exists that undecideds have picked any value at all, let alone one that is exactly halfway between the poles.
In reality, voters align along a multi-dimensional scatterplot. For simplicity’s sake we often assign their attitudes a place on a one-dimensional line. In the end, nevertheless, they - committeds and undecideds - pick poles. Any assignment of shades of meaning is done after-the-fact. No median can exist in voting.
This points out one of the weaknesses in looking too much at the effect the OP brings up. It implicitly assumes that everyone is both going to vote and isn’t going to cast a protest vote for someone other than the two major candidates.
A committed, cohesive special interest group (including the grass roots groups that we tend not to associate with “special interests”) can have an effect far beyond it’s limited size when elections are expected to be close. Grass roots special interests can be significant forces for fundraising (see Obama’s and Sanders’ recent campaigns). Unlike other special interests they also represent chunks of votes. Due to the members being politically active they may be more important than other possible voters. They’re already likely voters.
It’s a delicate dance to move center while gaining more votes than you lose when there are strongly committed groups inside the coaltions we call parties who’s votes you might lose.
(Sigh) I was a Rockefeller Republican. More accurately, in 1980 I was an Anderson Republican. Socially liberal, but no huge problems with businesses. That year they threw me out.
In the 1970s when I studied this sort of thing in a formal setting, the rule of thumb was that the wealthy and/or educated were more likely to vote Republican. My theory is that the Republican’s realized that appealing to the rich is no way to get elected so they “manufactured” concern over abortion, guns, etc. They encouraged the RINO concept and then introduced the myths of Trickle Down and later “job creators”. Now we have the income gap due to those policies. That is not a problem to the party leaders as they are on the good side of the gap. The real problem is that some people have worked their way up the party ranks who really believed in those social issues.
That is my theory of the Republican Party as a fraud.
It’s not that the extremist will vote for the other side, it’s that the extremist will stay home on election day. That’s why parties try to rally the base so much - turn out is the biggest part of election day victory.