The middle voter

[mdmc]

We all know them; the wind blows, and they move. Most of my life revolves around the democratic party, but I know many blanks and republicans. Often, how these middle voters vote decide the election.
At the Presidential level, Kerry and Clark seem to speak to these folks. Bush has never satisfied their concern that he is able to do his job (whereas we know that he can't do his job).
Bush has gotten to these voters by perception. I'm going to win, so vote for me. I have friends that only vote for winners; Dean and Bush have split them up.
Allot of my middle friends are former dems. They like Kucinich and Dean. We live in NY and they will vote green.
What is your experience with middle voters?

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. They are cynical

and think all politicians are crooks. They also think that Bush is more crooked than most and that he lied about Iraq. That has made them uneasy. I'm waiting for the dust to settle after the primaries and hope and pray that the nominee tells these people the truth about Bush. They are ready to hear it.

[HereSince1628]

2. Middle voters...

I think its a fashion thing. Since Carter's "national malaise speech" the liberal label has become increasingly unpopular. Calling oneself an independent or moderate not only freed you from being placed in the same category with the alledged "failure of liberalism," it also came with the impression that you "gave thought" to where you placed your vote. Consequently, being seen in public as a leftist became associated with dogmatic reactions which were seen as a negative thing (although it must be said that dogma in the sense of standard doctrine can be viewed as good, bad or anywhere in between).

Regardless of what "independent" associate of mine said to me about their willingness to consider all candidates, most of them still believed in a two party system (largely divided along the liberal/conservatism axis), and had a general sense of whether they were more or less similar to the beliefs of the democratic or republican parties.

In the 1980's, the success of the republican reaction to the failings of the 60's & 70's led democratic politicians (especially southern democrats) to reassess the connection of the party with liberalism. In due course the DLC emerged. They talk a lot about the middle. Indeed the focus on the middle is the supposed hallmark of new democrats. But Joe Lieberman, a former president of the DLC, isn't in the ideological middle, rather he's to the right of it. Which I only mention to make the point that saying you are in the middle and actually acting out a middle course may be unrelated.

If polls mean anything (and there is some room to doubt whether they capture intended information or whether the information that is gleaned is interpreted correctly) then in the past year there is an increasingly diminishing number of people in between liberal and conservative camps. That is not the same as saying there is not a middle. IF any opinion is distributed among the population in a bell-shaped manner there will be a larger middle of that distribution than the extremes (on edit all distributions have a middle). My point is that such a statistical middle has no causal relation to middle of the ideological spectrum along which the opinion is measured.

I interpret the apparent polarization to mean there are fewer voters in the middle. Mostly opinion is fairly polarized on major issues...doctrine of pre-emptive war, tax cuts, role of government in social services etc. Consequently there are fewer voters to swing, and the polarization will make it much more difficult to "steal" voters from either side.

So my feeling is this election is one in which the appeal isn't to the middle but rather to the base. Winning, for either side, means motivating the base to get to a voting booth. This isn't bad for democrats as in general across the country more people lean toward democratic ideals than they do toward republicas.