{"id":14463,"date":"2014-10-31T08:56:33","date_gmt":"2014-10-31T12:56:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=14463"},"modified":"2014-10-31T08:59:47","modified_gmt":"2014-10-31T12:59:47","slug":"radical-voters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=14463","title":{"rendered":"radical voters?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two Berkeley graduate students,\u00a0<\/span>David E. Broockman\u00a0and\u00a0<\/span>Douglas J. Ahler have\u00a0conducted research that is already influential enough to become the subject of a column<\/a>\u00a0by\u00a0Thomas B. Edsall in the New York Times. Based on their own large survey of Americans, Broockman and Ahler argue <\/a>against the widespread premise that\u00a0voters are more moderate than elected officials are. Instead, they argue, many voters hold\u00a0ideologically inconsistent preferences. For example, someone may strongly oppose abortion (generally seen as a\u00a0conservative stance) while favoring single-payer health insurance (coded as liberal). If you average that person’s\u00a0preferences, she\u00a0looks moderate, but she\u00a0actually favors policies both\u00a0too\u00a0liberal and too conservative to get through\u00a0Congress. Thus, if politicians shift to more moderate policies (e.g., partial restrictions on abortion and a mixed health care system, like the ACA) they will not increase their\u00a0support. The unpopularity of Congress reflects its failure to satisfy a population that holds\u00a0diverse, unpredictable, and often “radical” views:<\/p>\n

Contrary to the conventional wisdom rooted in the ideological\u00a0perspective, most citizens do not seem to wish the Senate were composed of 100 Olympia Snowes\u00a0and Max Baucuses, the noted Senate moderates. But this does not mean that Americans are satisfied\u00a0with the politicians who represent them either. Rather, because each citizen\u2019s pattern of views\u00a0across issues appears unique, each citizen is likely to be \u201cdisconnected\u201d from the positions their\u00a0representatives take in his or her own way, a situation which the election of more moderates\u2014or\u00a0more of any other one particular kind of politician\u2014could not broadly resolve.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I would argue that\u00a0ideological consistency is a problematic concept.\u00a0It is highly debatable whether any given position on abortion or foreign policy fits\u00a0better with a favorable or critical stance toward\u00a0welfare programs. In a multiparty democracy, we would see\u00a0a menu of many ideologies that could not all be arrayed\u00a0on a single scale. For instance, we would probably have a viable libertarian party that seemed “liberal” on social issues and “conservative” on economic ones, and a statist conservative party that was willing to use instruments like welfare to strengthen traditional values. Instead, our two-party system imposes a single spectrum that does not fit\u00a0the variation in individuals’ views.<\/p>\n

I would further argue that despite all the vituperation and philosophical posturing in\u00a0today’s politics, the real policy\u00a0options being considered by Congress all fall within a narrow range. For instance, the party that\u00a0is supposedly socialist and deaf to\u00a0limits on government would actually\u00a0like to raise federal spending by a couple of points of GDP,\u00a0at most. And the party that regards freedom\u00a0as threatened by runaway government would really like to trim\u00a0federal spending by a couple of points. Many\u00a0perfectly reasonable policy ideas\u00a0are considered untouchable in Congress.<\/p>\n

As one of their methods,\u00a0Broockman\u00a0and\u00a0<\/span>Ahler show\u00a0people seven options on each policy topic\u00a0that ostensibly range\u00a0from radically liberal to radically conservative (or vice-versa; they randomize the order). Thus to pick the first or the last choice shows that\u00a0you are radical. But these are some of the ideas that they code as falling\u00a0at an\u00a0extreme end of the spectrum:<\/p>\n