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from NewsLink, Vol. 5, No. 1, Fall 2000
A popular theory holds that, in a two-party system, candidates aim to please the “median voter.” This voter sits in the center of the ideological spectrum, with half the other voters to his ideological left and half to his right. The theory is that both candidates have an incentive to take positions identical to those held by this hypothetical voter, thus avoiding “extreme” positions that would permit a more “moderate” opponent to garner a larger share of the vote. The rejection in 1964 of Barry Goldwater's conservative platform has stood as an object lesson on the importance of this theory, as well as the perils that are faced by any politician who ignores it.
After Goldwater's defeat, American conservatism underwent a period of soul searching. A “conservative movement” sprang up, the purpose of which was to inculcate the electorate in conservative principles and values, to prepare the groundwork for another try at the presidency. These efforts, so many conservatives told themselves, ended in success with the election of Ronald Reagan. The median voter had, so it appeared, undergone an epiphany. Voter sentiment as a whole had shifted to the right, so that the median voter had become substantially more conservative. A presidential candidate could now be “moderate” and “conservative” at the same time.
Experience over the ensuing Bush and Clinton years did not seriously undermine this idea, at least insofar as Bill Clinton succeeded politically by positioning himself as a “New Democrat.” Clinton got re-elected by championing welfare reform and balanced budgets.
Now fast forward to November 7, 2000. Did Bush and Gore split the vote because they mimicked the ideological views of the median voter? The answer is, “No.” In fact, the two candidates took sharply different stands on such issues as tax policy, social security privatization, prescription drugs for seniors and educational choice. Only a voter suffering from political schizophrenia could simultaneously adopt such divergent views.
We do not, therefore, have two candidates who split the vote by going to the center. Rather we have two candidates who split the vote by going away from the center to the left (Gore) or the right (Bush). A now-famous U.S. map shows a wide swath of mainly Western and Southern Bush states bordered by and laced with the Gore-leaning urban corridors. (see http://www.usatoday.com/news/vote2000/cbc/map.htm )
This, I think, requires us to reinterpret the post-Goldwater era in American politics. The electorate as a whole has not shifted to the right. Rather, it has divided itself, amoeba like, into two electorates, each opposite points on the ideological spectrum. Ralph Nader was wrong. This was not a choice between tweedle dum and tweedle dee but between two protagonists in a still unresolved battle of ideas.
This has important implications for political strategy. Had either candidate won decisively, then the lesson for the losing side would be to move closer to the middle. But neither side won decisively and there appears to be no middle to which future candidates can move. Indeed, the outfall of this election seems likely to consist of a hardening of voter sentiment around polar extremes – this because of the inevitable recriminations to follow the Florida debacle.
In the last election, 100 million Americans voted, with 50 million voting from the left and 50 million from the right. And there are another 100 million nonvoters up for grabs. The winning side in the next round of elections, to take place in just two years, will be the side that markets its ideas more successfully to 150 million people who now lean to the other side or who didn't vote.
Next year there will be much talk of “healing” and “bringing the nation together.” But it is the foregoing political arithmetic that will dominate the real political agenda.
NewsLink is the quarterly newsletter of the Beacon Hill Institute for Public Policy Research at Suffolk University. © 1996-2002. All rights reserved.
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