Jonathan Katz and I once wrote a paper, Moderation in the pursuit of moderation is no vice: the clear but limited advantages to being a moderate for Congressional elections, but that was almost 20 years ago and I haven’t looked at the data recently.
David Austin asked for my thoughts on a recent post by my occasional collaborator Elliott Morris who argued that the claims of electoral value of moderation have been overstated.
In that post, Elliott writes that moderate Democrats raised more funds than further-left Democrats, and this explains some of the observed difference in electoral performance between. That could be. In our earlier analysis, we did not look at money as an intermediate variable. If moderates win in part because they get more $, that doesn’t diminish the electoral argument for supporting moderate candidates, but it does call into question the “median voter” reasoning, as it’s more of an issue of the “median dollar.” Elliott, citing political scientist Adam Bonica, refers to “skill differences between candidates,” and I do think candidates differ in vote-getting skill, but that’s really a separate issue, and in this sort of study I don’t see how you’d easily separate skill from voter appeal based on policy positions.
Bonica’s claims (as reported by Elliott) seem stronger than Elliott’s own summary: “moderation doesn’t matter at all, it’s that it matters a lot less than other factors so should not be the end goal of strategists.” I think we can all agree on that!
If you’re a Democratic strategist, four arguments in favor of supporting more moderate candidates are: (1) the advantages of moderation (including those from possibly being able to raise more money) are small but not zero, and the national election could be close (especially given recent gerrymandering efforts), (2) you might prefer moderate positions yourself, just on policy grounds, (3) you might feel that moderates could act more effectively in Congress by working with Republicans, (4) longer-term you can argue that a more moderate “brand” would be good for the Democratic party as a whole, even beyond the fates of individual congressional candidates, and that it could also reduce political polarization
From the other direction, four arguments for a Democratic strategist to support more left-leaning candidates are: (1) the advantages of moderation are small enough that it could be worth losing a couple of seats in Congress to get the benefit of more enthusiasm among younger voters, (2) you might prefer more left-leaning positions yourself, just on policy grounds, (3) you might feel that left-leaning candidates could act more effectively in Congress by providing a more unified opposition to Republicans, increasing their bargaining power by being less likely to be divided by wedge issues, (4) longer-term you can argue that stronger policies are necessary to combat Republican advantages in the corporate and media world.
One can make similar arguments from the other directions for Republicans, although for that party it seems that there are two dimensions of moderation or extremism: One dimension is policy (where moderation corresponds to keeping the government running, continuing some form of universal health care, having a flexible policy on abortion, etc., and the right corresponds to big cuts in government, private health care, abortion bans, etc.) and the other dimension is support for Trump, which is less about specific policies and is more about support or opposition to whatever is the current White House line.
So, yeah, it’s complicated. I think that Elliott’s summary is consistent with our finding from a few years ago regarding the moderate benefits of moderation. In that paper we estimated the average benefit of moderation to be about 2% of the vote (averaging over the two parties), but with the rise of political polarization it makes sense that the electoral effect of any factor would be in decline, so something more like a 1% effect seems plausible. There’s evidence that, during the past two decades, the effect of the economy on presidential elections and the incumbency advantage in congressional elections have both declined. The one factor that we’d expect to increase in importance is party balancing. Right now the Republican party controls all three branches of government (Congress, the President, and the Supreme Court), so party balancing would imply a big swing to the Democrats in any case. Whether this will be enough to overcome geography, that’s another story.
Regarding the discussion of “wins above replacement” in politics: This is all fine, but remember that in sports we have lots of replications. We get an estimated WAR for Shohei every year, and each of these yearly estimates is based on over 100 games. In contrast, a politician only gets one general election every 2 years or less, so these numbers are inherently more variable. I wouldn’t recommend ignoring WAR in politics–it’s a useful idea–just don’t take it too seriously. We had a long discussion of this back in 2011 and a brief followup last year.
In a model where 1) the thermostatic / pendulum effect is real and 2) partisan voters take policy/ideological cues from leaders, what’s the long-term outcome (in terms of elections, policy and institutions) of a setting where one party chooses maximum extremism and the other party chooses maximum moderation?
Daniel:
This kinda comes up in items (3) and (4) in the above lists.
A few years ago I discussed an asymmetry in current American politics whereby the Republicans need less than half of the two-party vote to win elections. I asked the question, “What happens to the median voter when the electoral median is at 52/48 rather than 50/50?” Back in 2016 and 2020 this was an electoral college bias; more recently it’s not so clear what will happen in presidential races, but both the House and the Senate seem to be aligned so that the Democrats need lots more votes nationally than Republicans, just to break even in Congress, due to a mixture of gerrymandering within states (most notoriously with the recent Texas redistricting, but it’s been happening in other states too) and the geographic distribution of voters between states. Also there’s the Supreme Court, which has been in Republican control for awhile and has occasionally put its thumb on the electoral scale.
Given all this, the Republicans have more freedom of movement and less motivation to move to the center, at least when it comes to short-term political objectives and long-term goals of changing the system and locking in partisan advantages.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Andrew. I think it would help to include more of this quote from Elliott so it reads a bit better:
The claim that I have made is not that moderation doesn’t matter at all, it’s that it matters a lot less than other factors so should not be the end goal of strategists.
Yes, as written in the post it was a bit confusing and I just assumed your addition.
So, what happens if you apply the arguments in favor of moderation to Republicans? Somehow this discussion seems to ignore developments in society and politics that make relying on the old rules perilous.
John:
I discuss the situation for Republicans in the seventh paragraph of the above post and also in my comment above.
The political class of republicans are well aware that having extremists win their primaries is bad news.
Each side’s rhetoric is composed as if they believe that other side’s extremism is it’s weakest point, and yet neither side is entirely composed of moderates. Perhaps being a moderate is beneficial to the party, but not to the individual moderate.
But there aren’t any extremists on the left in the US: the most “extreme” positions in the (US) left are simply normal center right common sense in the rest of the world. For example, the US is the only industrialized country that doesn’t provide afforable health care to all it’s citizens and legal residents. The US is the only industrialized country that doesn’t negotiate drug prices with drug companies. The US incarcerates more of it’s citizens than any other country in the world. The US is the only industrialized country that doesn’t control guns. Fixing these aren’t “extreme”, they’re common sense human decency.
We’re told that Lizzy Warren is a wacko crazy lefty, yet her CFPB does nothing more than make sure banks follow the law and don’t rip off their customers. What’s radical about that?
We’re currently in a state in which extreme radical rightist anarchists are in the midst of tearing down the US government, and you all are discussing “moderation”. Y’all needs a reality check. (Really: we’re fighting court battles to force the government to pay grants already awarded. You think there will be significant new science grants in 2026 or 2027? If you do, you’re dreaming.)
The Japanese universities are eyeing scientists leaving the US. They’re worried living conditions on an academic salary in Japan aren’t attractive to current US scientists. But by early 2027, those gigs are going to be looking seriously posh. Start studying now: Japanese ain’t an easy language.
You guys have a full-tilt case of fiddling while Rome burns.
The most “extreme left” think you will see is “Medicare for All” or “open city run grocery stores in neighborhoods that commercial stores can’t or won’t serve.” Not radical. On the extreme right you actually see members of Congress saying that the US should be a Christian country or a nominee for an Ambassadorship who says that going back to Slavery is okay. Radical.
Recent developments have made this question even more vexing. I question the value now, if there ever was much value, to view politics in this country primarily through the lens of moderation versus extremism. In part, that’s because the rural-urban divide has become a far stronger intermediary factor, with gender and education level also growing more predictive. But above all, antipathy toward a monolithic “other”—mostly manifest along partisan lines—dominates causality. This explains a unified MAGA coalition even as Trump violates campaign promises (e.g., avoiding foreign entanglements). The core driver is the hatred and grievance he’s harvested, locking in support from key blocs (read: working-class voters) into a coalition unified less by policy than by shared enmity toward “the elite,” “the left,” and liberals—a stance Trump now performs with gusto, despite his plainly elite life and ideological shapeshifting.
In close races for congress local issues can be extremely important. AOC is my representative, and I can assure you that if Joseph Crowley had shown up for a debate in the Bronx he would likely still be in Congress.
I wonder if there’s that much of a difference among all these people about the data. Maybe what you have here is more of a practitioner vs. purist divide. If you’re a strategist, you’re looking for rules of thumb that may help you out. You may also speak in terms a bit “clearer than truth” to get people behind your strategy despite – or because of – the uncertainty, which will offend the rigorous types.
You’re not going to say, “Guys, we really don’t know how to win elections, but there may be something to this WAR and moderation thing. Let’s give it a try.”
You’ll be more emphatic.