Unscientific bias towards "moderates" by political establishment may lead to fewer votes

[DemocracyMouse]

A sober, peer-reviewed article in The Legislative Studies Quarterly suggests that political establishments may be hampering the GOTV effort. There's a bias towards "moderate" candidates which is intuitive and not very strategic.

Principled Moderation: Understanding Parties’ Support of Moderate Candidates
By Hans J.G. Hassell
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/lsq.12197

Recent scholarship has argued that parties strategically support more moderate, and thus more electable, candidates. Using interviews with party elites and new data on the party support and the ideology of primary candidates for the US Senate, I show that parties do support moderate candidates. However, using evidence from districts with different levels of competitiveness and over time, I find that support of moderate candidates appears not to be strategic. Rather, party support of moderate candidates appears to be the result of the ideological preferences of party leadership rather a strategic effort to win elections.

If we want progress AND we want to win, stand up to insider's unscientific biases. Progressives and moderates can both win and we need to check our biases – especially with a perfect storm of Republican/Russian evil to pivot on.

[DavidDvorkin]

1. Constant repetition of this assertion does not make it true.

[DemocracyMouse]

2. It was a study outlined in a serious journal, not an assertion.

[KPN]

3. Just saw the study described in this TLSQ article today.

Interesting read.