How to win in a world with no moderates
@HuffingtonPost @CNNPolitics @politico
When I studied political science, they explained that most people were moderate and fewer people had more extreme ideologies (top chart). If this is the case, the way to win an election was to be as close to other candidate as possible, but very slightly to your ideology. This meant that candidates were actually very similar and whoever was more mainstream won. However, this might not apply anymore. Perhaps there aren't very many moderates and people feel much stronger about their positions (second chart). The implications are numerous. In order to win your party's nomination, the candidate has to be more extreme. Jeb Bush would have probably done great 20 years ago (attracting moderate Republicans and Democrats, but now neither of those exist is large numbers). So you end up with two candidates that are further and further from each other, with moderates disliking both of them. So if the button chart reflects the population, how can a candidate win the nomination and not be seen as a radical by the rest of the party.
For example, if Hillary Clinton had actually taken up some republican policies she would have won easily (see purple star with blue line). If she came out for gun rights, lower taxes, and against some international trade agreements, she would have easily beat Trump. However, she might not have beaten Bernie Sanders to get the nomination. What past candidates have done in this situation was say one thing for the primaries and another for the general elections. Hillary could have easily done this, but instead she doubled down on her principals thinking that when she won, she could do everything. However, she didn't win, so it doesn't really matter. Future candidate will face this same issue for both parties. If Democrats move their entire platform to the right (which is definitely a concession), they can dominate. However, Republicans could do that same thing, but moving to the left (stop cutting social programs and stop with the tax cuts for the rich).
I know this isn't anything new, but I always wanted to visual it.
Note: If Hillary Clinton had promised not to introduce any legislation or regulations reducing gun rights, she might have won and gun sales would go down. For all of Obama's plans to have gun laws, he didn't do anything meaningful and every time he tried, gun sales went through the roof. If it isn't an issue you can win, why lose votes over it? It's called a compromise.
When I studied political science, they explained that most people were moderate and fewer people had more extreme ideologies (top chart). If this is the case, the way to win an election was to be as close to other candidate as possible, but very slightly to your ideology. This meant that candidates were actually very similar and whoever was more mainstream won. However, this might not apply anymore. Perhaps there aren't very many moderates and people feel much stronger about their positions (second chart). The implications are numerous. In order to win your party's nomination, the candidate has to be more extreme. Jeb Bush would have probably done great 20 years ago (attracting moderate Republicans and Democrats, but now neither of those exist is large numbers). So you end up with two candidates that are further and further from each other, with moderates disliking both of them. So if the button chart reflects the population, how can a candidate win the nomination and not be seen as a radical by the rest of the party.
I know this isn't anything new, but I always wanted to visual it.
Note: If Hillary Clinton had promised not to introduce any legislation or regulations reducing gun rights, she might have won and gun sales would go down. For all of Obama's plans to have gun laws, he didn't do anything meaningful and every time he tried, gun sales went through the roof. If it isn't an issue you can win, why lose votes over it? It's called a compromise.
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