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While the article nicely deploys undergrad political science, I don't really think that the median voter theorem can possibly be true as described. The thing i
by eli_gottlieb 10y ago
While the article nicely deploys undergrad political science, I don't really think that the median voter theorem can possibly be true as described. The thing is, the nominal "center" around which the two-party system orbits moves, on timescales of decades. If we assume both parties gravitate towards a genuinely "privileged" (in the sense that the origin point of a coordinate system is privileged) center, it shouldn't do that: the center should remain exactly where it allows the two parties to split the country down the middle and never shift.
Instead, what we observe is that our political center has been moved further and further into the Republican Party, ever since the '70s. Prior to that, during the fifth party system, the political center rested with a coalition of urban and Southern working-class Democrats.
Now in our current election, the center seems to be moving into wealthy suburbs and Silicon Valley, libertarian-lite.
The interesting question is what sort of forces move the center and alter the composition of the party-system at any given time.
- zeveb 10y ago> Instead, what we observe is that our political center has been moved further and further into the Republican Party, ever since the '70s. Perhaps in an economic sense, but hardly in a cultural sense (other than guns, is there a single Republican cultural issue which has been winning against its Democratic inverse?).
- eli_gottlieb 10y agoYou're right: the cultural center has shifted glacially to the left over time, with erratic jumps back to the right when the Republicans actually hold supermajority power, followed by further gradual leftward drift when they lose it. Though in an economic sense, yeah, my original point stands. And actually, it's strengthened in a way: how can we talk about the median voter theorem pushing the parties to the center if they spent the whole most recent party system both moving strongly to the right on economic issues while moving erratically but consistently to the left on social issues? That would mean there isn't even one center!
- marmaduke 10y agoThink tanks, reframing issues? I'm thinking of Lakoff's work.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- maxerickson 10y agoThe Republican party isn't an ideological center, it is a coalition (same with the Democratic party). For example, Republicans in congress strongly supported the 1965 Voting Rights act, 111-20 in the house and 30-1 in the Senate (Democrats 217-54, 49-17). I think this is an important point because there is a good chance that the existing Republican coalition will break down in the next 4 or 8 years.