Sunday Discussion Group

March 4, 2007

It’s one of those political truths that “everybody knows” — the party that wins the elusive middle wins the election. It’s all about the “center,” where most Americans are and where campaigns are decided. This seemed particularly true in 2006, when, the conventional wisdom tells us, the middle expressed its disgust with the status quo and backed a divided government so that both sides would govern from the center.

But is any of this true? Political scientist Alan Abramowitz and journalist Bill Bishop suggested this week that we may want to reconsider the “myth of the middle.”

The Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) surveyed more than 24,000 Americans who voted in 2006. The Internet-based survey compiled by researchers at 30 universities produced a sample that almost perfectly matched the national House election results: 54 percent of the respondents reported voting for a Democrat, while 46 percent said they voted for a Republican. The demographic characteristics of the voters surveyed also closely matched those in the 2006 national exit poll. If anything, the CCES respondents claimed they were more “independent” than those in the exit poll.

The CCES survey asked about 14 national issues: the war in Iraq (the invasion and the troops), abortion (and partial birth abortion), stem cell research, global warming, health insurance, immigration, the minimum wage, liberalism and conservatism, same-sex marriage, privatizing Social Security, affirmative action, and capital gains taxes. Not surprisingly, some of the largest differences between Democrats and Republicans were over the Iraq war. Fully 85 percent of those who voted for Democratic House candidates felt that it had been a mistake to invade Iraq, compared with only 18 percent of voters who cast ballots for Republicans.

But the divisions between the parties weren’t limited to Iraq. They extended to every issue in the survey. For example, 69 percent of Democratic voters chose the most strongly pro-choice position on the issue of abortion, compared with 20 percent of Republican voters; only 16 percent of Democratic voters supported a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, while 80 percent of Republican voters did; and 91 percent of Democratic voters favored governmental action to reduce global warming, compared with 27 percent of Republican voters.

When we combined voters’ answers to the 14 issue questions to form a liberal-conservative scale (answers were divided into five equivalent categories based on overall liberalism vs. conservatism), 86 percent of Democratic voters were on the liberal side of the scale while 80 percent of Republican voters were on the conservative side. Only 10 percent of all voters were in the center. The visual representation of the nation’s voters isn’t a nicely shaped bell, with most voters in the moderate middle. It’s a sharp V.

OK, if this is true, and Abramowitz and Bishop certainly make a compelling case, what does this tell us about how the political process should work?

A few (partially contradictory) angles to consider:

* Is the new congressional Democratic majority overly concerned about losing a middle that barely exists?

* If there is a small and mushy middle, doesn’t it suggest that Karl Rove’s base-motivating approach to campaigning offers the biggest bang for the buck?

* If the left and right represent similar percentages of the electorate, does that 10% in the middle become more important? Or less?

* As Ron Chusid noted, doesn’t the Abramowitz/Bishop argument completely undermine the rationale for efforts such as Unity08?

* Or are we misunderstanding what the “middle” is all about? A post at The Moderate Voice argued, “The ‘middle’ is more about the commitment to collaboration – not about where we start.” If so, isn’t is possible to appeal to the middle, regardless of ideas or ideology, based on how one sides tries to govern?

Discuss.

Go for what’s true and what you believe in. The heart always wins.

  • My first question would be to ask how the carefully calibrated opinions of voters on these issues compares to the opinions of non-voters.

    I’ve long suspected that one of the overarching strategies of the Republican party is to make political campaigns so vicious and cynical that they would suppress the votes of non-ideologues, then rely on their organization and the zealotry of some of their core groups to win elections.

    It’s also somewhat interesting that the 14 questions are dominated by the issues that the radical right has politicized most, and framed so assiduously into wedge issues. Obviously the framing has been very successful in finding two identifiable sides.

    The world of academic political science always seems hollow to me, trying to use either game theory or incomplete survey research without much success.

    Any links to more than brief

  • The middle, except in times of massive upheaval, has no measurable effects. Like The Ether, you might as well say it doesn’t exist. The middle epitomizes a species peculiar to American politics: the non-voter.

    Considering how much time and money we devote to education in this country, we have an amazing number of political no-shows, people who can’t name any elected representative, who know nothing of politics or history or the Constitution, people whose politics are no deeper than images on the TeeVee screen nor real than the splatter on their Xbox.

    Nearly all studies of the electorate during the last century point to three major sub-groups: the active, the attentive, and the inert. Studies of mass media and advertising suggest a two-step flow of communication: the originally sent-out message getting digested by the social groupings one is a part of before it takes hold. All of this suggests that “the middle” (i.e., the disinterested and ignorant) plays very little role if any, that it would be foolish to waste any time or effort worrying about them. Whether they will ever wake up to their own stake in the spin-offs from our political games — America’s image in the world they inhabit, building record debts which they will inherit, moving what could have been their jobs overseas because of corporate greed — is pretty much up to them. Short of a charismatic leader (in Max Weber’s sense of the term) to wake them from their lethargy, like Robert Kennedy or Martin Luther King, they really don’t matter. More importantly, they don’t want to matter.

    No one uses the term Lumpenproletariat anymore. In Marxist Scripture (and some dictionaries) it refers to those members of the proletariat, especially criminals, vagrants, and the unemployed, who lack class consciousness. I think we would do well to dust off this term and use it for the new class which has no consciousness: the disinterested and ignorant, the inert, the middle, those who can’t be aroused by much of anything in the real world.

    Eugene Burdick, in The Ninth Wave, described the electorate as a pair of icebergs, only ten percent which was visible. Candidates, he said, were vying to attract those individuals still capable of hopping from one berg to the other. But Burdick’s “undecideds” are surely very few, particularly in the Abramowitz/Bishop study with its evidence of growing polarization. And they definitely shouldn’t be confused with that Great Lumpenproletariat holding sway in America today. Fifty state strategy? Certainly. Reaching out to stimulate non-voters, the Lumpenproletariat? Only if you’ve got money to burn.

  • I think the first error of analysis is looking at the 10% “middle” and saying “well, out of 100%, that is a very small slice.”

    Name the last Presidential election decided by 10% or more.

    That 10% is still where all of the action is at, particularly when you add in, as Aeolus notes, those who traditionally dont vote.

    Moreover, 14 discrete and ideologically loaded questions may miss a large number of people who understand they wont get everything they want, their way, and who believe that politics is the art of the possible, or something that should unite, or mediate compromise among comepting purist factions — there may be a significant percentage of voters who are quite a ways to the left of right on the survey’s 14 questions but who would put their answer on the role of governing above any of their substantive ideological answers. Those “governing centrists” are not well captured by the survey’s methodology – and that may be particularly true if, as many of us tended to believe post 2006 elections, that there is a certain amount of “partisanism fatigue” based on how the Rethugs have done their thing.

  • Good post. Now I some evidence as to why it’s been getting pretty lonely around my political neighborhood. -Kevo

  • If there is a small and mushy middle, doesn’t it suggest that Karl Rove’s base-motivating approach to campaigning offers the biggest bang for the buck?

    Some time ago, I read a similar article, about how there really wasn’t a middle. The article mentioned that Rove had discovered this some time ago and that was a reason why he encouraged such partisan politics.

  • After eight years of Bush /Rove’s political strategy of undermining our rights, exploiting our differences and ruining the country for special interests …..the time is ripe for authentic competent leadership that is guided by the common good.
    Not exploiting or advancing the left or the right but valuing both sides…. inclusive of all Americans and guided by restoring democracy and rebuilding America. What would if feel like to live under the constitution and be a functional democracy? America is hungry for the answer.
    Those committed to restoring democracy are the new center.

  • I think there most certainly is a ‘center’ of the electorate who want a functioning, pragmatic government. For years, the repubs claimed the center by demonizing everything to the left. This served them well – until the dysfunctional and unpragmatic effects of their ideology became obvious. That, combined with their ‘with us or against us’ mentality pushed much of the ‘center’ into opposition, as it disallows a center. What we have today is the rabid right, and the rest of us. It would be a mistake to read this reaction as some sort of mass conversion to ‘liberalism’.

    That said, the Dems have consistently made the mistake of trying to ‘win the center’ by moving toward it. The way to win the center is to pull it toward you by articulating pragmatic solutions and maintaining some level of day to day consistency.

  • I’ll add that Senator Barack Obama articulates a compelling, sophisticated message of pragmatism transcending partisanship that resonates with broad segments of the population, and especially with the generation that came of age in the nineties. These younger voters have never seen any politics other than the scorched-earth partisanship of the radical right that began with Clinton’s election and has accelerated through the Bush-Cheney reign.

    I can see his campaign bringing millions of new voters and discouraged voters into the process so that a survey like this would have very different questions, and very different results.

  • In a roughly even partisan environment, you can’t win without the middle or the base, so questions of either/or seem pointless. Aeolus (@2) mentions recent Republican strategies and tactics related to framing, and I think this is where the real challenges exist for Dems. Gore and Kerry would have won their elections had it not been for how effectively the right demonized them — and how ineffectively they responded.

    I continue to believe a sizable segment of the electorate has been hoodwinked by the vast right-wing deception machine into thinking that all things “liberal” are despicable, . Perhaps we saw some awakening in the face of total Republican control over the past few years, but there is still a tremendous distance to travel — and the deception machine is going to be running full tilt for the foreseeable future, at a pace that is impossible to keep up with. For that reason, it seems to me that the only reasonable target is the machine itself.

    The basic tactic of the right is to take the low road while claiming the high road. If Dems can discredit the machine and the tactic – while promoting an agenda that does not alienate the middle, I think we’ll find an increase in voters who can again allow themselves to identify as liberal.

    For the past couple decades, the right has “educated” the public. It’s long past time that the left engage in it’s own brand of education.

  • My reading of this topic is that there are 10% of the population committed to being non-partisan on issues and look to stay away from being labeled as being for one party or the other. The mushy middle may be the voters who align themselves with the prevailing political winds and jump on the bandwagon with the most raucous party.

    How many times have we all run into people who fall in line for one party or another but whose stand on political issues tends to fall in the category of brand loyalty rather than a firm foundation of political beliefs. Maybe these are people who fall for anything because they stand for nothing, but I see a goodly number of voters who vote by brand and not conviction. It may be these guys who will switch brands based on simple labels such as liberals being bad and conservatives supposedly being righteous that makes them swich brands come election time.

    These are the folks who will fall for the attack ads and the labels or the charisma of a candidate. Branding is all about aligning a product’s characteristics with those of the buyer. It’s time to show the nation how their beliefs are actually more in line with what Democrats believe than Republicans.

  • Is it that in the ’08 election more people were motivated to vote than previously?

  • In my small town in semi-rural NH, which is the subset of voters I know best, the “undeclareds,” those who do not declare a party affiliation, or, having voted D or R in a primary, immediately switch back to undeclared, tell me that they want to reserve the right to vote in either primary, but I think some of the reason is that it is too scary, still, in NH, to be a declared Democrat. Of course, being a declared Democrat, and co-chair of the town committee, I mostly interact and work on town issues with those who lean left.
    How big is the middle in NH? In terms of voting registration, about a third of the voters, I think. In the last election, they must have voted overwhelmingly D, especially in the state races, since we took back both houses of the legislature, and the executive council, something that hadn’t happened since the 1800s. The Congressional races were closer.
    Sununu is vulnerable in 2008, it will be interesting to see what happens there.

  • Go Left, young man! The Democratic party has a natural majority, if only they are motivated to vote!(and their votes count) Dont support bankruptcy ‘reform’ and other sellout positions. Corporate support will automatically come to the winners.

    Im listening to Ehrenreich, right now on C-Span2 and she says Gore also lost the 2000 election by avoiding populist economic and health care issues. Thats why I voted for Nader. The Dinos should be extinctified!

  • The middle moves.

    Universal healthcare was radical left a few years ago. But now, according to polls, it’s in the middle.

    There are some Democratic politicians, however, who are living in the past and think that it is still an issue of the radical left.

    We want to avoid supporting those politicians.

  • Or, you know, who gives a shit about this kind of political triangulation? How about the Democrats fight for the wellbeing of all the people, and leave the Republicans with their tiny constituency of the hyper-rich and the hopelessly benighted?

    Seems like there’s a lot more mileage to be gained for picking a few pro-good principles and sticking with them rather than guessing what a bunch of indecisive people with short attention spans want this week.

    How about:

    “A Fair Day’s Wage For a Fair Day’s Work”
    “No One Goes Hungry in America”
    “Everyone Gets to See a Doctor”
    “Admiration from Abroad”

    …just for starters? This isn’t hard, people. Pick a few things that are good for everyone and stick by them.

  • A post at The Moderate Voice argued, “The ‘middle’ is more about the commitment to collaboration – not about where we start.” — CB

    Then they aren’t “middle”; they’re Democrats. At least in the current political climate. Dems are and have been, for years, much better than Reps at trying to accomodate the largest numbers of people, at compromising, at engaging in a give-and-take. Reps’ characteristic seems to be “my way or the highway”. No discussion, not an inch of ground given, no prisoners taken.

    I used to be a moderate and still think of myself that way; even if VA allowed party registration, I’d have been registered as an independent. But the last 6 yrs have tested my patience to the limits. When I signed up to help out at the electoral board and was asked which party I wanted to help I answered “Dems”. And when asked if I would be willing to help out with the other party if needed I said “no”. Screw them and the horse they rode in on (quite literally in case of Macaca Allen, BTW). An occasional Rep may still be worth bothering about but they’re almost as rare as hens’ teeth, and I’m unwilling to take the risk of having to help out some scumbag.

  • The “middle” is really more about ignorance than moderation.

    Republicans have “captured” the middle, by complimenting their base-motivating strategies, with ignorance-maximizing tactics.

    What I really would like to know about the Republican voters is what percentage have accurate information about their candidates and their positions? I suspect the Republican voter, like the Fox News viewer, is an ignoramus. And, a significant portion of the “independent” voter-in-middle part of the population are people, who cannot be bothered to actually know anything; they hear the noise, get annoy and tend to think, “a pox on both your houses”. And, they are generally encouraged to do so, by subtle Republican propaganda, which draws false equivalence between opposing political movements and pundits, and tries to make substantive points disappear under the cover of mere partisan sniping.

  • “In a roughly even partisan environment, you can’t win without the middle or the base, so questions of either/or seem pointless.”

    Yep. In fact, in the spirit of the successful 50 state strategy, compete everywhere. Even those sectors you don’t win you can trim, and you make the other side have to spend resources.

  • A domain we may be overlooking is the, albeit small, percentage of Republican voters who don’t support their party’s policies: the 18% who felt that it had been a mistake to invade Iraq; the 20% who are pro-choice on the issue of abortion; the 20% who didn’t support a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage; the 21% who favored governmental action to reduce global warming; and an overall 20% Republicans who were not on the conservative side of the scale. Could these guys and girls represent a fertile quasi-middle ground?

    Seems to me that significant electoral swings occur as much through disaffection as indecision. These significant percentages of apparently dissatisfied Republican voters should not be lost sight of among the hordes of their nominal allies. These are the ones who could switch vote, even while maintaining a sembence of their traditional allegiance. We don’t have to make them into Democrats, we only have to be true to our beliefs, and leave a box open for their mark.

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