Fred Gohlke wrote:
Good Morning, Kristofer
re: "You may say that parties, wanting to be re-elected, would
stay in center ..."
I think parties are more inclined to keep one foot in the center while
stretching as far as they can toward the extreme with the other. That's
why we so often hear that the 'neoconservatives' have taken control of
this party or the 'ultraliberals' have taken control of that party.
The stretch toward extremism to attract the more radical constituencies
is the dynamic that causes the lurching we experience.
That's an interesting point, one that I hadn't considered even though
what I said about primaries could probably be used to derive what you said.
Consider the situation on a left-right spectrum:
-1 0 +1
------------C------------
Now, the parties (call them X and Y) would want to position themselves
in this manner, to capture the most voters:
-1 0 +1
-----------XCY-----------
However, this also means that each party reaches over the entire half of
the spectrum. Keeping that platform coherent, no matter keeping the
party united, is not going to be easy. Because of the "center of wings"
or primary effect, the party considers its center to be somewhere around
0.5 or -0.5.
So what would one expect to happen in this case? Well, the parties would
try to position themselves close to the middle in order to capture as
many voters as possible. When the feedback from the voters is strong,
the party will remain there. But the party's own center is at the 0.5
points, therefore, when there is little feedback, the party "stance"
will creep towards the 0.5 point. It can't just go there immediately,
because then the other party could follow and claim all the voters that
would be lost, so there's some tension between the goals.
If one election every four years is weak feedback, then we shouldn't be
surprised to see the parties move towards 0.5 (or -0.5, depending on
what party we're talking about). If they can convince the voters they're
close to 0 while they're really at 0.5, that would be even better.
It's also possible for voters or parties to be imperfect. A voter just
to the right of center may vote for X for various reasons (not knowing
the platform well enough or whatnot), and a party may not have its
internal center at 0.5 (depends on who is really active within the
party). These are long term analyses, and dynamics can weaken them.
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