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Man Bites Blue Dog: Are Moderates Really More Electable than Ideologues?

January 2019
The Journal of Politics 82(1)

Authors:

Are ideologically moderate candidates more electable than ideologically extreme candidates? Historically, both research in political science and conventional wisdom answer yes to this question. However, given the rise of ideologues on both the right and the left in recent years, it is important to consider whether this assumption is still accurate. I find that, while moderates have historically enjoyed an advantage over ideologically extreme candidates in Congressional elections, this gap has disappeared in recent years, where moderates and ideologically extreme candidates are equally likely to be elected. This change persists for both Democratic and Republican candidates.

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Man Bites Blue Dog: Are Moderates

Really More Electable than Ideologues?









Abstract: 

 !

""# "!

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"$%

!"&

'!

!"

#()

*+

Keywords,$!!-!

Running header: *

!!

$*./012

(",$(134.

"

56!"

"!($(

"(



+%57*

*8,99999&:

'"

            !  !  



'!

!"

!          "        8*"

4;20: "!!

          !    )    

  +        *!       

  !"  "

        *      *  

( +!

2<133.1=1343!"&4<134<

$!!+>

!"*>

8'!+133=:

"!"

 (        )   

',

            

8"-!    ?  @  1332:!      (  

        87"    @  133=:!  

8! 

    1330:!  !          !      

    - 8A(  134=:   

           

!      B    "(        

""

How Ideology Can Inuence Electoral Success

        (          

   C     

 $! "(   

!

"    (          8*"  4;20:   D  

    "            

8133<: "!

!

!8! 1330:! 

    (         8  1342:  E

 !"

            8       :  E

    "  !              

        "    !      

8 1342:6>

"                  



"!       "    

>    )!            

!  "                  

  "

          >   

  "  B   8@

4;;.:)

!            >    @  8133<:

!"(

 $!

!        

!85

1342:  )      "  "          

!                  



EF7

")"

+  !  "              

* )         

+8+1342:G!

!

""

  C      (  "      

            B  8  1340:

!                  )  

HIC"

+  8*:        !      

*  8+:          )   

!

              

8!@134=:



      -         

E

8  !      (        

          :!          

    -      4;.3          8"-

1343: 7           

  -!              -  !

86133<:$

        !      

"    7 !

candidates >  !

"

)                    

          $      



 !       "    

8A(  133;J  K  134<:  $!          

  "  4;01    1341  8A(  134=:   )        

      "        8"-  

E  134=:  !  >  -!    (      B

! " 8A( 134=J

134.:  E                "      

  -!          -        

!



KB              #

  "            !    "

(*K'H

I +!   * )! ) '-!  

'!      134=    !  "  "  "    

8134=:+"

!

believe       )              C    !

            (   "

!"("*

("(!!

    !          !  



Methods and Results

        *    $!      !  

G8*$G:8134/:4;.3B1341!$>

              8134/:L    

                )

!(*EBK7$K)G!

        #           '  



)">

 (      "   4 $     8134<:L

'61    ! "        

1 !$

 $"

+*!

"(>

&

2)'6!"

"8134<:

!"

6

!'68r M;1:B

!"$

!!!$

      B  ! Ideological Extremity!  "  

33348 : <;.48: ) 

  3.1=!"     3/.. $  

! Year, "384;.3:/181341:!

      "        )        

        (          !  $

Ideological Extremity Year.

$    "              8134/:

)% ! Winning Election!"(

4"!-"$

                  ! Vote

Share!)3433!"

2/<413//$!$

      !  "            

!  "            !      

!       /  

B  %  >!              

' B   +       

64

)        L  >        

"                $  %  

   ( "  

! " 

 (  "$ %      

("!>

     )     

("!

"  "# ( " C  "

13N (" 4;.3!  "

  "    .3N  (    "  "!    133.!

     

    (    "   !  "      

"      23N      )        

(

" 

+L>

61!"$4;.3!

""<3N

!"""=3N)

   23N   !     133.  

1341!                  

8:

"!

  !                

+ 6 '! "  1.N  ! A

O(84.N:D810N:$1343

  1341!  "              "!  

*)"E+

5@@

0 .2 .4 .6 .8

Probability of Winning

1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004 2008 2012

Year

Strength of Ideology = 0 Strength of Ideology = 3

Figure 1. Ideology and Electability 1980-2012

30 40 50 60 70

Vote Share

1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004 2008 2012

Year

Strength of Ideology = 0 Strength of Ideology = 3

Figure 2. Ideology and Vote Share 1980-2012

0 .2 .4 .6 .8

Probability of Winning

1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004 2008 2012

Year

Strength of Ideology = 0 Strength of Ideology = 3

Figure 3. Ideology and Electability 1980-2012 - Repub licans



0 .2 .4 .6 .8

Probability of Winning

1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004 2008 2012

Year

Strength of Ideology = 0 Strength of Ideology = 3

Figure 4. Ideology and Electability 1980-2012 - Democrats



6  /    <<             

"! ("  

%!>+*8

        *:  $            

!"(!"

"(1343!>"

"!

    " #(  

 )  

    !      *    +  "  

&



Discussion and conclusion

$!"

!!(!

""

#(')

#$

"

"(""



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

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polarization, and American democracy. K" ,O

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H$!+!*'

GIJournal of Politics =.84:,02B..

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'IElectoral Studies<4,41C11

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GIBritish Journal of Political Science/<81:,144C110

*"!4;20An Economic Theory of DemocracyK"O(,

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war? The myth of polarized America. K"O(,

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organization 4<81:,/3<B/1<

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American Political Science Review 43;84:,4.B<1

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IPublic Opinion Quarterly.384:,/;1B<43

A(!"133;The partisan sort: How liberals became

Democrats and conservatives became Republicans. ',

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!A134.Uncivil agreement: How politics became our identity.

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Perceptions of Electability: Candidate (and Voter) Ideology, Race, and Gender

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2024
POLIT BEHAV

Previous work has shown candidate electability is an important consideration to voters in deciding who to support. However, we do not know what candidate qualities voters consider more electable, especially in the absence of polling information. While scholarship has documented general election penalties for candidates with certain demographic and ideological characteristics, we do not know whether voters actually use these factors when judging electability. Using a conjoint experimental design, we examine how candidate characteristics influence perceptions of candidate electability. We find voters perceive women and minorities as less electable and ideologically extreme candidates as more electable. However, perceptions of electability vary with voter characteristics. Our results indicate that arguments about electability, for many individuals, are based on their own ideological preferences (and to a lesser extent, their identity) rather than systematically viewing candidates with attributes that provide general election advantages as more electable.

Middle of the road: The effects of political ideology on social status perceptions of and by political moderates in organisations

Article

Jun 2023
Int J Organ Anal

Purpose Drawing on research in the social psychology and political science literatures, this research aims to examine how political moderates perceive, and are perceived by, their co-workers with differing political ideologies in an organisational context, with a focus on the perceptions of social status. Design/methodology/approach To test the hypotheses regarding the social status perceptions of and by political moderates in the workplace, the authors conducted an online experiment in which working adults read a hypothetical workplace scenario and then assessed the social status of a co-worker based on the political ideology of that co-worker. Findings The results largely supported the two hypothesised asymmetries of social perceptions of and by political moderates in an organisational context. Specifically, political moderates were perceived to have higher social status by their moderate and conservative co-workers than by their liberal co-workers. In addition, political moderates perceived moderate co-workers to have higher social status than conservative ones. Originality/value This research investigates the influence of political ideology on social status perceptions in organisations by focusing on the previously underexamined political moderates. The findings illustrate the importance of political moderates, who tend to espouse a moderate level of resistance to social change, in the process of developing a functional hierarchy and balancing change and stability in organisations.

The Causal Effect of Candidate Extremity on Citizens’ Preferences: Evidence from Conjoint Experiments

Article

Oct 2024

Previous studies demonstrate that politicians’ issue positions and rhetorical style have grown increasingly extreme. It remains unclear, however, whether extremity pays off electorally. Using two preregistered conjoint experiments conducted in the United States (N = 2,006) and Israel (N = 1,999), we investigate whether citizens reward or penalize candidates for taking extreme positions (i.e., proposing radical solutions to societal problems) and using an extreme rhetorical style (i.e., communicating in a way that signals rigidity and dogmatism). The results are consistent in showing that extremity is costly for candidates. Across countries, citizens penalize both in-party and out-party candidates for both extreme positions and an extreme rhetorical style, and the average penalty for being extreme is a 16-percentage-point decrease in candidate support. Our results are in line with scholarship demonstrating that citizens disapprove of elite extremity. They also indicate that citizens react independently to elites’ substantive policy positions and their communication style.

Institutional design and the stability of responsiveness in the American states

Article

Jul 2024

Scott J. LaCombe

Background There is a significant body of research investigating how institutions moderate the relationship between public opinion and policy in the American States, but far less attention has been given to understanding the variance of policy change. Some states have remained relatively stable in their ideological trajectory, while other states tend to see large unstable swings in policy. Objectives I argue that the variance of policy, not just the mean, is an important component of understanding policy responsiveness. A state's institutional design can influence both the extent to which policymakers follow public opinion and the ease of moving the status quo. Methods I use a heteroskedastic regression to model policy responsiveness and variance in the state using a measure of the strength of a state’s checks and balance system and a measure of accountability pressure. Results States with a robust checks and balances system see less policy variance, whereas there is mixed evidence that institutions designed to strengthen public opinion’s role in policy are associated with more stable policy. I also find that institutions play a much stronger role in reducing social policy variance compared to economic policy. Conclusion Variance should be incorporated into our understanding of policy responsiveness, and represents another dimension in which institutions may influence the relationship between public opinion and policy.

Tea Party of the Left? Progressive Insurgent Influence in the Democratic Party, 2018-2022

Article

Jan 2024

Amelia Malpas

Sincere, Strategic, or Something Else? The Impact of Ranked-Choice Voting on Voter Decision Making Processes

Article

Mar 2024
AM POLIT RES

The academic debate on how voters decide which candidates to support often centers on whether they prioritize their personal preferences or consider who can beat the opposing candidate. American research on voting behavior has largely focused on first-past-the-post (FPTP) elections. However, considering jurisdictions are adopting new electoral systems such as ranked-choice voting (RCV) this leads to several questions about the impact of system adoption on voter decision-making. Particularly, does the voter decision-making process differ depending on the system used? To investigate the impact of RCV on voter decision-making across electoral systems we conducted a survey experiment in a federal senate election. Our findings indicate that in comparison to FPTP elections, RCV elections may lead to decreases in both sincere and strategic voting. Instead, RCV appears to increase voter uncertainty around how to decide which candidates to support and leads to voters who appear to be neither sincere nor strategic.

De la contestation par primaire au sein du Parti démocrate : la gauche états‑unienne face au défi du bipartismeConfronting Bipartisanship: A Socialist Perspective in the Democratic Party

Article

Dec 2021

Thomas Jeangirard

Les États‑Unis connaissent depuis quelques années un renouveau socialiste,qui s’est manifesté par les succès de diverses organisations, de journaux mais aussi d’hommes et de femmes politiques désormais médiatiques. Grâce à un succès dans ses actions militantes mais aussi dans les urnes, ce mouvement a modifié dans une certaine mesure la composition de l’échiquier politique états‑unien, et, à travers le mécanisme des primaires ouvertes, celle du Parti démocrate en elle‑même. Cet article revient sur cette stratégie socialiste de contestation par primaire en l’analysant comme réponse au contexte institutionnel particulier du pays. Il examine dans un second temps les différentes approches au sein du mouvement qui, loin d’être unifiées dans leur attitude vis-à-vis du Parti démocrate, parviennent toutefois à proposer un projet politique commun.

Candidate Ideology and Vote Choice in the 2020 US Presidential Election

Article

Dec 2023
AM POLIT RES

A prominent literature argues that moderate candidates perform better in general elections, but a competing literature that emphasizes partisan loyalties contests this. The 2020 Democratic presidential primary represented an opportunity to speak to these debates due to high voter information about multiple moderate and extreme candidates running in the same election. We present results from two national surveys (total n = 102, 425) that asked how respondents would choose in an election between one of the Democratic candidates and Republican Donald Trump. Our evidence is consistent with moderates having an electoral advantage: more moderate Democratic candidates receive more support against Trump than do more extreme candidates. Providing information through plausible attacks did not change these results. Notably, Sanders had the highest support after the moderates, but this was due to an implausibly large increase in intended turnout among young voters. Inconsistent with theories emphasizing the strength of partisan loyalties, Republican voters explain much of this effect.

Giving to the Extreme? Experimental Evidence on Donor Response to Candidate and District Characteristics

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2024

How does candidate ideology affect donors' contribution decisions in U.S. House elections? Studies of donor motivations have struggled with confounding of candidate, donor, and district characteristics in observational data and the difficulty of assessing trade-offs in surveys. We investigate how these factors affect contribution decisions using experimental vignettes administered to 7,000 verified midterm donors. While ideological congruence influences donors' likelihood of contributing to a candidate, district competitiveness and opponent extremity are equally important. Moreover, the response to ideology is asymmetric and heterogeneous: donors penalize more moderate candidates five times more heavily than more extreme candidates, with the most extreme donors exhibiting the greatest preference for candidates even more extreme than themselves. Republicans also exhibit a greater relative preference for extremism than Democrats, although partisan differences are smaller than differences by donor extremism. Our findings suggest that strategic considerations matter, and donors incentivize candidate extremism even more than previously thought.

From Gridlock to Polarization

Article

Jan 2023

Replacement in the U.S. House: An outlier-chasing model

Article

Full-text available

Sep 2014

We know that most House seats remain within the same party over the course of a redistricting decade. For example, over 75% did so in the last decade. This gives rise to the question: “Why do some seats change hands and others not?” We seek to go beneath the standard answers (such as extent of electoral vulnerability as indicated by the previous victory margin, challenger qualifications, relative spending of challenger and incumbent, midterm loss affecting districts newly won by the president’s party, realignment effects that made Democrats in the South vulnerable) to examine the conditions of ideological competition that affect each of these factors and the concomitant probability of electoral defeat. We offer a general model of unidimensional party competition across multiple constituencies, where a party “chases the outliers” of the other party that are closest to its own ideological mean, thus eliminating “anomalous” districts which should be vulnerable to change in party control, and we test that model with data from the U.S. House of Representatives 1980–2006. Over time, Democrats capture liberal and moderately liberal districts held by Republicans, while Republicans capture conservative and moderately conservative districts held by Democrats. In a neo-Downsian world where candidates do not locate at the preferences of the median voter in the district but, rather, are shifted in the direction of their own party mean, we show that this outlier-chasing dynamic can be expected, in the long run, to “empty” out the center. This results in an equilibrium of ideologically distinct parties and a high level of polarization, involving a self-reinforcing dynamic in which the seats that become vulnerable change as the parties become more distinct. Indeed, rather than puzzling about why so much polarization exists, our work suggests that the real puzzle is why it has taken so long to get to the level of polarization we presently enjoy. We suggest that the combination of incumbency advantage, and multidimensionality of political competition might be the answer, with the Civil War role of race as an independent dimension slowly wearing off.

It’s Nothing Personal: The Decline of the Incumbency Advantage in US House Elections

Article

Full-text available

Apr 2015

Gary C. Jacobson

With little fanfare, the electoral advantage enjoyed by US representatives has fallen over the past several elections to levels not seen since the 1950s. The incumbency advantage has diminished in conjunction with an increase in party loyalty, straight-ticket voting, and president-centered electoral nationalization, products of the widening and increasingly coherent partisan divisions in the American electorate. Consequently, House incumbents now have a much harder time retaining districts that lean toward the rival party. Democrats had been the main beneficiaries of the denationalization of electoral politics that had enabled the incumbency advantage to grow, and they have thus been the main victims of the reemergence of a more party-centered electoral process. Republicans enjoy a long-standing structural advantage in the distribution of partisans across districts, so this trend has strengthened their grip on the House even as they have become less competitive in contests for the presidency.

Downs and Two-Party Convergence

Article

Full-text available

May 2004

Bernard Grofman

▪ Abstract We take as our starting point the insights of Downs (1957) into two-party competition. A careful reading of Downs offers a much more sophisticated and nuanced portrait of the factors affecting party differentiation than the simplistic notion that, in plurality elections, we ought to expect party convergence to the views of the median voter. Later scholars have built on Downsian ideas to see what happens vis-à-vis party differentiation when we modify key assumptions found in the basic Downsian spatial model. Recent work allows us to turn what is taken to be the Downsian view on its head: Although there are pressures in two-party competition for the two parties to converge, in general we should expect nonconvergence. Moreover, contra the negative portrait offered by Green & Shapiro (1994) of the limited or nonexistent value of research on party competition models in the Downsian tradition, we argue that, when viewed as a whole, neo-Downsian models—especially those of the past decade—do allow us t...

The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy

Book

Dec 2017

Alan I. Abramowitz

Mass Polarization: Manifestations and Measurements

Article

Mar 2016

Yphtach Lelkes

The debate on mass polarization is itself polarized. Some argue that the United States is in the midst of a culture war; others argue that the claims are exaggerated. As polarization is a multifaceted concept, both sides can be correct. I review four distinct manifestations of polarization that have appeared in the public opinion literature—ideological consistency, ideological divergence, perceived polarization, and affective polarization—and discuss ways in which each has been measured. Then, using longitudinal data from the American National Election Studies (ANES), I update past analyses in order to more clearly show the ways in which Americans have or have not polarized: Americans at the mass level have not diverged, nor have they become more consistent ideologically, but partisans have; perceptions of polarization have increased, but this change is driven by partisans, who increasingly dislike one another.

The Rise of Negative Partisanship and the Nationalization of U.S. Elections in the 21st Century

Article

Nov 2015
ELECT STUD

One of the most important developments affecting electoral competition in the United States has been the increasingly partisan behavior of the American electorate. Yet more voters than ever claim to be independents. We argue that the explanation for these seemingly contradictory trends is the rise of negative partisanship. Using data from the American National Election Studies, we show that as partisan identities have become more closely aligned with social, cultural and ideological divisions in American society, party supporters including leaning independents have developed increasingly negative feelings about the opposing party and its candidates. This has led to dramatic increases in party loyalty and straight-ticket voting, a steep decline in the advantage of incumbency and growing consistency between the results of presidential elections and the results of House, Senate and even state legislative elections. The rise of negative partisanship has had profound consequences for electoral competition, democratic representation and governance.

Primaries with strategic voters: trading off electability and ideology

Article

Mar 2014

Mohammad Reza Mirhosseini

This paper presents a spatial model of primary election to analyze strategic voting and its effect on the policy outcome. Primary voters care for the electability of the candidates as well as their offered policies. The trade off between these two factors might make the preferences of the primary voters non-single-peaked. I show the median voter is still decisive when the preferences are quadratic. Moreover, I use comparative statics and numerical analysis to evaluate the conditions under which the position of the Condorcet winner in the primary election shifts toward the center. Among the conditions that contribute to such a shift are radical policies by the incumbent, public opinion shift toward the incumbent party, and accurate information about the population median.

What Happens When Extremists Win Primaries?

Article

Feb 2015

Andrew B. Hall

This article studies the interplay of U.S. primary and general elections. I examine how the nomination of an extremist changes general-election outcomes and legislative behavior in the U.S. House, 1980-2010, using a regression discontinuity design in primary elections. When an extremist-as measured by primary-election campaign receipt patterns-wins a "coin-flip" election over a more moderate candidate, the party's general-election vote share decreases on average by approximately 9-13 percentage points, and the probability that the party wins the seat decreases by 35-54 percentage points. This electoral penalty is so large that nominating the more extreme primary candidate causes the district's subsequent roll-call representation to reverse, on average, becoming more liberal when an extreme Republican is nominated and more conservative when an extreme Democrat is nominated. Overall, the findings show how general-election voters act as a moderating filter in response to primary nominations.

“Epilogue: What 2012 nomination contests Tell us about the future of the Republican Party”

Article

Oct 2014
ELECT STUD

Ronald Rapoport

Analysis of Tea Party activists within the Republican Party illustrates the “good-news, bad-news” aspects of intra-party factionalism. The good news is that nomination contests between Tea Party and establishment Republicans, divisive as they appear, do not necessarily undermine support for the party’s nominees in the general election. Support for Tea Party candidates among its activists in the 2012 presidential nomination fight produced increased support for Romney-Ryan in the general election. At the same time, however, activism for Tea Party candidates contributed to increased negativity towards the Republican Party among Tea Party activists, suggesting that the factionalism within the party is unlikely to be soon resolved. Finally we find that negativity towards the Republican establishment is playing an even greater role than negativity towards President Obama in producing continuing or increased Tea Party movement activity. This suggests that the movement has the potential to survive beyond Obama’s presidency.

Candidate Positioning in US Congressional Elections

Article

Apr 2004
BRIT J POLIT SCI

Barry C. Burden

Theory suggests that three factors – the importance of ideology to primary voters, costly movement due to candidate reputations and lack of competition – all contribute to candidate divergence in US congressional elections. These predictions are analysed with new data from a 2000 mail survey that asked congressional candidates to place themselves on a left–right ideological scale. The data reveal that candidates often diverge, but that the degree of candidate polarization is variable and may be explained by factors in the theory. Candidates with firm public reputations, those who face weak general election competition, and those who experience stiff primary competition are all more likely to deviate from the median voter's position. Perhaps more importantly, the locations that candidates adopt have clear effects on their vote shares.