I’m not sure what inspired Chutney to write a post advocating a new party in the political system. A political party geared toward towing the moderate line and structuring itself from the beginning to ward off corruption would get an awful lot of votes. Frankly, I’m a bit tired of people saying moderates don’t stand for anything. You can call it weakness all you want. I call it sanity.
Partisan bickering can too easily cause politicians to hold positions that are way too extreme for any sane person’s taste. In the book The Economics of Collective Choice, Joe Stevens took note of a couple of studies by Romer and Rosenthal on the ideological positions of voters and members of Congress. Romer and Rosenthal mapped out an ideological spectrum that ranged from -1.26 (ultra liberal) to +1.26 (ultra conservative). The ideological positions of voters formed a neat bell curve with the highest points somewhere between -0.06 and +0.06. This top of the bell curve alone accounts for 40 percent of the voter. Widening that view to the area from -0.18 to +0.18, you capture approximately an additional 25 to 30 percent of the voters.
In other words, a strong moderate candidate can capture about 70 percent of the vote.
What about the ideological positions of members of Congress? That looks a little more like a double-wave. Members of Congress tend to be the most likely to stand at -0.78 or +0.78 of the ideological spectrum.
The studies put forward by Romer and Rosenthal should stand as cautionary tales for all politicians. By “energizing the base,” you stand to leave out what becomes a silent majority. And that’s insane.
I guess the problem becomes mobilzing the ’slient majority’ to the polls. When the politicos starting beating thier ‘issue’ drumbs, then the people most likely to respond are the ‘wing-nut wingers’.
Case in point: Gay marriage ammendments from the 2004 election. I honestly feel (although I have no emperical evidence to back it up) that most Americans could have given two flips about the issue. It didn’t effect them, why should government get involved? However, this issue spoke loudly to the folks on the +0.18 side of the Romer-Rosenthal scale. Therefore, they got their butts to the polls. On the otherhand, I made sure I was in line before the polls opened to vote against the amendment.
I guess my point is: It’s the hot button issues that are going to drive people to the polls. Sane campaign finance reform isn’t as sexy as ‘gay-marriage’.
Comment by Kick The Donkey — May 1, 2006 @ 8:11 am
But here is the problem: Congress and state legislatures have gerrymandered the districts so badly that moderate candidates can’t make it through the primary because the participaing primary voters are so far to one side of the spectrum. Even if the district at large is more moderate than the primary, they will select the extermist closest to their positions.
Comment by tedb — May 2, 2006 @ 4:35 pm