Head Left, Young Man
We've been following a discussion that Hoboken Blogger Mister Snitch! started a few days back when he posed the question "Why are Democrats heading left?"
There were several suggestions, including one conservative who said it was probably more fun for Democrats to move to the left. However, we're going to argue it also makes sense strategically.
One of the most basic models to explain voter's political outlook is a simple curve:
At either end of the spectrum are small groups of liberal and conversative voters. Moderate positions in the center find the most support with voters. The diagram is a simple one, and no specific issue defines a particular person as liberal or conservative [indeed, what is "liberal" or "Conversative" is really a matter of an era's zeitgeist].
Meanwhile, because of single member districts-- that is, 1 district, 1 winner -- two parties coming from either end of the spectrum should have roughly an equal breakdown of elected officials:
Very conservative and very liberal politicians rarely are elected because so few people on the spectrum share their views. Also as a result, because the largest portion of the population is moderate or centrist in their views, both parties push to the center of the spectrum in an effort to gain a majority. Still, this would tend to mean that both parties would have a roughly equal portion of congress, and shared power.
However, what has happened instead is that the Republican party has struck a balance of centrist politicians and conservative politicians. In essence, because Democrats were making gains in the center of the spectrum of voters, the Republican party turned to the right of the spectrum to turn the balance and gain a majority.
At either extreme of the political spectrum there are still no elected officials. But the Republican party is relying on extreme conservatives to hold onto their majority. In recent years, Democrats have moved right to try and capture some of those votes. Bill Clinton accomplished this when he was elected, moving just to the right of the center. Conservatives of course would argue that Clinton was the devil's spawn. But compare Clinton to Roosevelt or Carter. Or Ted Kennedy. Clinton was right of center compared to these folks.
In either case, if Democrats continue to move Right, they will cease to moving towards the center. Instead, they will creep towards the conservative side of the spectrum-- where Republicans already dominate. There is no strategic advantage to move further right, to become more conservative. For one thing, the moment you move away from the center, the percentage of voters who share those views begins to drop. For another, republicans have already pretty much locked up the conservative voters. Sure, the Republican party could continue moving right [some might argue the conservative movement in the Republican party is like a freight train and will not be able to stop moving to the right, even if they now wanted to]. Hovever, for Democrats to win by moving right, Republicans would have to move to the marginalized extremes while giving up the moderate center. Its unlikely the Republican party will completely purge their moderate voices.
So instead, the only place left for Democrats to move and pick up voters, is to the left.
As illustrated here, if democrats were to move left [the lighter blue], there is a much large number of voters to be gained then moving a small degree to the right-- and Democrats can move to the left with interference from Republicans who control the right.
Meanwhile, since the Republican party already has moved dramatically to the far right, a small step to the left for democrats yields more voters than a small step to the right for republicans.
Illustrated above in the light red is the possible movement of Republicans towards the right alongside the light blue of Democrats moving to the left. Note how many more voters Democrats gain moving left than Republicans gain moving right, by adjusting their platforms roughly, the same amount in the opposite direction.
So head left young man.
Some problems with our analysis:
Its a very simplistic model of voter trends to create a single line. There are alot of complex issues at work. There is also the problem of campaigning-- that some candidates raise and spend more money, or sometimes a candidate turns out to be a dud, not because of political leanings but because of some more abstract issue. There are bound to be a few congressional districts that accidentally elect a candidate that doesnt share the views of the district. This also does not take into account the power of incumbancy, which is a very strong force in campaigns indeed. It also fails to address gerrymandering where one party realigns congressional districts to favor their party. Party politics is a very complex issue, but simplifying the information as was done here, we believe, hold true to the data while explaining why Democrats must move left in order to win.
There were several suggestions, including one conservative who said it was probably more fun for Democrats to move to the left. However, we're going to argue it also makes sense strategically.
One of the most basic models to explain voter's political outlook is a simple curve:
At either end of the spectrum are small groups of liberal and conversative voters. Moderate positions in the center find the most support with voters. The diagram is a simple one, and no specific issue defines a particular person as liberal or conservative [indeed, what is "liberal" or "Conversative" is really a matter of an era's zeitgeist].
Meanwhile, because of single member districts-- that is, 1 district, 1 winner -- two parties coming from either end of the spectrum should have roughly an equal breakdown of elected officials:
Very conservative and very liberal politicians rarely are elected because so few people on the spectrum share their views. Also as a result, because the largest portion of the population is moderate or centrist in their views, both parties push to the center of the spectrum in an effort to gain a majority. Still, this would tend to mean that both parties would have a roughly equal portion of congress, and shared power.
However, what has happened instead is that the Republican party has struck a balance of centrist politicians and conservative politicians. In essence, because Democrats were making gains in the center of the spectrum of voters, the Republican party turned to the right of the spectrum to turn the balance and gain a majority.
At either extreme of the political spectrum there are still no elected officials. But the Republican party is relying on extreme conservatives to hold onto their majority. In recent years, Democrats have moved right to try and capture some of those votes. Bill Clinton accomplished this when he was elected, moving just to the right of the center. Conservatives of course would argue that Clinton was the devil's spawn. But compare Clinton to Roosevelt or Carter. Or Ted Kennedy. Clinton was right of center compared to these folks.
In either case, if Democrats continue to move Right, they will cease to moving towards the center. Instead, they will creep towards the conservative side of the spectrum-- where Republicans already dominate. There is no strategic advantage to move further right, to become more conservative. For one thing, the moment you move away from the center, the percentage of voters who share those views begins to drop. For another, republicans have already pretty much locked up the conservative voters. Sure, the Republican party could continue moving right [some might argue the conservative movement in the Republican party is like a freight train and will not be able to stop moving to the right, even if they now wanted to]. Hovever, for Democrats to win by moving right, Republicans would have to move to the marginalized extremes while giving up the moderate center. Its unlikely the Republican party will completely purge their moderate voices.
So instead, the only place left for Democrats to move and pick up voters, is to the left.
As illustrated here, if democrats were to move left [the lighter blue], there is a much large number of voters to be gained then moving a small degree to the right-- and Democrats can move to the left with interference from Republicans who control the right.
Meanwhile, since the Republican party already has moved dramatically to the far right, a small step to the left for democrats yields more voters than a small step to the right for republicans.
Illustrated above in the light red is the possible movement of Republicans towards the right alongside the light blue of Democrats moving to the left. Note how many more voters Democrats gain moving left than Republicans gain moving right, by adjusting their platforms roughly, the same amount in the opposite direction.
So head left young man.
Some problems with our analysis:
Its a very simplistic model of voter trends to create a single line. There are alot of complex issues at work. There is also the problem of campaigning-- that some candidates raise and spend more money, or sometimes a candidate turns out to be a dud, not because of political leanings but because of some more abstract issue. There are bound to be a few congressional districts that accidentally elect a candidate that doesnt share the views of the district. This also does not take into account the power of incumbancy, which is a very strong force in campaigns indeed. It also fails to address gerrymandering where one party realigns congressional districts to favor their party. Party politics is a very complex issue, but simplifying the information as was done here, we believe, hold true to the data while explaining why Democrats must move left in order to win.
4 Comments:
Wow, charts!
One wild card is current events. Say you're a right wing hawk (a term I haven't heard in a while) with an agenda against North Korea. You don't get much play, but you soldier on. Then a couple months before a primary, North Korea blows up an a-bomb inside South Korea. That kind of stuff can make voters adjust their sights.
I've had a long few days, and I can't quite focus on this idea. Just wanted to check in, and say I'll take a better look at this soon.
This comment is to prove I made it (nearly) all the way through this post. Three quick points:
1) You are wrong to say that those at the extremes are not elected (Brownback, Santorum, Wellstone, etc.)
2) There is a big ideological difference between those who vote/donate money and those who do not. See, as the best book on the subject, Mobilization, Participation, and Democracy in America by Rosenstone and Hanson
3) You might be interested in
"Culture Wars?" by Fiorina at Stanford. I think it's actually wrong - he's a strange populist who believes in centrism - but it's a quick read and addresses your points directly.
(1) I don't tend think of those you mentioned as particularly extreme. Sure, they head towards the lower end of the spectrum, but by and large no one in public office is the extreme liberal represented at the far end of either side. Again, this model is rather simplistic, and doesn't balance the difference between social conservative and fiscal conservative or social liberal and fiscal liberal. Nor does it take into account issues that dont fall into either of those categories. But generally speaking, as a whole unit, the curve does a decent job of representing how people would associate themselves [which is by and large as important or more important than how they actually feel]. If you asked people to give themselves a rating of 0 to 10, liberal being 0 and conservative being 10, the majority of people are going to come back and say they are a 4,5, or 6.
At the same time, I would imagine, though I lack the resources to actually do this, if you were to look at say 20 pieces of legislation, per congress, over the last 50 years, rank those pieces of legislation as either convservative or liberal, and then chart out how conservative or liberal each congressional member is, most, if not all members would probably fall into the 3,4,5,6,7 category, on average over the last 25 sessions of Congress.
And I would then suggest, further analysis would show that more recently, you would end up with more 6 and 7s then you have 3 and 4s. And from time to time you may have 0's, 1's or 2's, 8's, 9's and 10's, but for the most part, on average, elected officials are going to fall in the center, with periods of time spent towards the lower end balanced by other periods of time at the higher end.
I'm sorry to say that you're wrong.
1) If you believe Brownback is not extreme in every single sense of the word, then no one anywhere is. I do not care what scale you propose.
2) Someone (many someones actually) has done the work you propose, coding important legislation as either liberal or conservative and then tracking support. The Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) rankings are solid and I've spent a lot of time looking at them. And ya know what? Barely anyone is at the center. Almost everyone is near one of the extremes. It is a scale of 0-100, with 100 being the most "liberal". Nearly the entire Republican leadership over the past two decades - which I spent a lot of time analyzing - are below a 10. I believe the average over the past decade is 6. That's of out 100. The Democratic average among the leadership over the same time was, I believe, around 84. Both of these numbers are somewhat more extreme than the party norm - the reason for this is the discussion of my research - but not by much. On the 1-10 scale you propose, majorities of both the House and Senate would be 1, 2, 8, 9 or 10. There are many reasons for this - again, see Rosenstone and Hanson - but I think the most important is something you have already mentioned: single-member, winner-take-all districts (along with decades of gerrymandering).
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