This Matt Yglesias tweet caught my eye:
While that sounds plausible, I believe Yglesias is mistaken about how politics works. There’s more to politics than public opinion polling on this or that issue; the intensity of support also matters. Here’s a simply numerical example:
Suppose that the GOP contained 50% of the public, and the Democrats were also 50% of the public. (I’m ignoring independents just to make a point.) Also assume:
1. Roughly 25% of the public is religious conservatives. Assume their policy views are endorsed by only 35% of the electorate. In other words, their views are unpopular.
2. Roughly 25% of the public is economic conservatives who oppose high taxes on the rich, higher minimum wages, etc. Again, let’s say only 35% of the public agrees with them.
It looks like it would be a mistake for the GOP to adopt conservative positions on religious questions and economic policy. These positions don’t poll well.
But that view ignores the intensity of beliefs. Many of the religious conservatives may not agree with economic conservatives on tax issues, but it’s the moral issues that really motivate their voting. Vice versa for the economic conservatives. You could add in a few other issues where GOP voters might have passionate beliefs, such as opposition to restrictions on gun ownership, or favoring a ban on marijuana. Even if the positions don’t poll well, they may offer an opportunity for the GOP to add small but highly motivated voters to their “big tent” coalition.
The Democrats do the same. Recent polls in (left-leaning) California suggest that the affirmative action proposition on the ballot is not very popular, but the issue may be important in motivating a significant portion of the Democratic “base”.
I think of the GOP as the party of people that resent progressive views on a wide range of unrelated policy questions. They have “conservative” views on everything from economics to traditional religious values to foreign affairs to criminal justice.” There are no “rank and file conservatives”.
To some extent all parties include “strange bedfellows”, but that seems truer of the GOP than the Dems, and much more true of the GOP than the Libertarians or Socialists. This tendency might be less pronounced in a multiparty parliamentary system with proportional representation. But when there’s a two party system, at least one party (maybe both) must include lots of people with little in common.
There’s a name for political parties that only adopt highly popular positions: “Losers”
PS. Here’s a general rule of thumb. Be skeptical when a pundit (including me) says that a political party needs to fix its problems by adopting positions closer to their own view on the issues. I almost never recall a pundit saying to a losing party, “Your mistake is that you agree with me on this issue; you need to start opposing my view on this issue.”
READER COMMENTS
Michael
Oct 28 2020 at 6:13am
I think Matt’s comment is motivated in part by the asymmetry between the parties. Because of the way the system works and the axes of partisan alignment, the GOP can compete for control of all of the levers of power without attaining a majority of the vote.
If the GOP could broaden its appeal just enough to attain majority support, they would dominate.
I think that you get at part of the reason why they do not in your post.
robc
Oct 28 2020 at 7:41am
I for years (decades) have thought of the Dems as the party of patchwork coalitions, but it was probably true (or is now) of the GOP as well. I think you are making the same mistake I used to make in reverse.
robc
Oct 28 2020 at 7:46am
I realize it was probably because I have lived most of my life in KY, where you still have a lot of blue dog democrats who vote for candidates who are far left of themselves.
Anecdote time: A senate candidate (opposing McConnell) once had the office next to mine in our building. One day we heard a major argument between the son of the candidate and the DC consultant over guns. The son was a fairly typical rural, carry rifle in the pickup, Kentucky democrat. He thought an anti-gun position was death for his Mom’s candidacy.
In reality, running against McConnell is what did her in, but his point was valid.
Danny
Oct 28 2020 at 9:20am
LOL, you used Yglesias’ own Pundit Fallacy against him. The Democrats are generally considered the bigger tent party with stranger bedfellows, whereas the Republicans are more aligned demographically and ideologically. Perhaps some degree of realignment is beginning to breakdown this historical pattern.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Yglesias#:~:text=On%20or%20before%202010%2C%20Yglesias,what%20the%20pundit%20wants%20substantively.%22
Michael Byrnes
Oct 28 2020 at 9:36am
The GOP has had its own big tent coalition throughout much of my adult life, although it is breaking down in the Trump era. That coalition was something like “social conservatives + small government + military/national security.”
I think Matt’s comments are inspired by the breakdown of the GOP big tent and the resultant shrinking of the GOP coalition to point were they rely on countermajoritarian features of the system to maintain political power.
Scott Sumner
Oct 28 2020 at 12:51pm
It’s not at all clear that the GOP’s problems extend beyond Trump. Before Covid, he was widely expected to be re-elected. I’ve seen so many predictions of decline for one political party or another during the past 50 years that I now discount them entirely.
Lizard Man
Oct 28 2020 at 1:27pm
The Republican Party has lost the popular vote in 6 out of the last 7 elections, and are set to do so again this election. It is very hard to implement your parties policy if you don’t control the presidency, while the presidency does offer an increasing ability to legislate via regulations and the bureaucracy. Trump’s win in 2016 was very narrow, and probably a fluke.
Scott Sumner
Oct 28 2020 at 8:54pm
I agree that he was a weak candidate, but the GOP won half the elections in the 1900s, and I expect them to win half in the 2000s. If they are not on track to do so, they’ll simply adjust their positions to add more groups to their coalition. That’s how the system works in the US
Mark Z
Oct 29 2020 at 3:05am
“If they are not on track to do so, they’ll simply adjust their positions to add more groups to their coalition.”
That can take quite a long time. In the 30s and 40s Democrats held the house, senate, and presidency for 14 years; they monopolized both chambers of congress from the 50s to the 80s. It’s also not necessarily much consolation if one’s party has to mimic much of the other party’s platform to survive. E.g., if the GOP permanently embraces ‘big government’ so it can win half the elections, then that’s not much better for small government enthusiasts than one party dominance.
E. Harding
Oct 29 2020 at 9:31am
“Before Covid, he was widely expected to be re-elected.”
On no evidence. Polls showed him losing even at the time. I certainly did not expect him to be re-elected.
Knut P. Heen
Oct 28 2020 at 11:40am
The median-voter theory omits that a large fraction of potential voters do not vote. Moreover, you face competition for the median-voter. Why not fire up some of the people who do not vote instead? I seem to recall Murray Rothbard offered an explanation along these lines back when the big issue was Protestants vs. Catholics. The parties used extreme language in order to get their people to vote.
After all, why bother to vote at all if the choice is between a voice and its echo?
nobody.really
Oct 29 2020 at 11:06am
On game theory.
1: Many game theoreticians would question why people vote at all. The odds that your one vote would tip the balance in most elections are quite small.
2: But once we acknowledge that people DO vote, game theory suggests reasons why we should expect rival political candidates to adopt rather similar positions.
If you are going to set up your hotdog stand along a mile-long stretch of beach, where should you put your stand? In the middle of that stretch; that way, you minimize your distance to the greatest number of beach-goers. But what if you find that the only hotdog stand on the beach is already positions there? You should put up your stand immediately next door. That way, you maximize the portion of the beach to which you are the most proximate vendor.
We might expect similar behavior among politicians. Under this theory, your goal is not to have the views that are the CLOSEST to your constituents, because your constituents will have varying views. Rather, your goal is to have the views that are slightly closer than those of your rival–and then to exaggerate those differences. So if your rival proposes a tax rate of x%, you propose a slightly lower rate, and then accuse your rival of being a socialist. People who care about lower tax rates will support you, even if grudgingly, because you’re the lesser of two evils.
3: Admittedly, these are stylized examples. Clearly people DO vote, and candidates DO take the occasional bold position, so this game theoretical model requires further refinements. My point is simply that I start from the presumption that competitive forces will drive each side to mimic its rival–in elections, marketing, sports, war, religion, courtship, or whathaveyou.
RPLong
Oct 28 2020 at 11:46am
Yglesias is making a really terrible point: Republicans could win some votes away from the Democrats by adopting policy positions more like the Democrats have. That’s a true point, but not a particularly insightful one. Democrats, too, could walk away with the election by adopting some of Republicans’ key platform positions. There is an obvious reason why they don’t do that.
Scott Sumner
Oct 28 2020 at 12:52pm
RPLong, I’m claiming that a party that focused only on popular positions would lose.
Floccia
Oct 28 2020 at 12:20pm
Great post.
AND IMO contrary to what Matt’s position is, the fact that UBI/NIT are unpopular with voters, even when so far the results of tests with them look better than the welfare that we have, seems to be because people hate the idea of even the possibility of able people living off the state without working.
anonymous
Oct 28 2020 at 1:04pm
I find Matt’s tweet simply bizarre. What are the supposed “very extreme” views on taxes and the welfare state? It would make a little more sense to me if he said something about social/cultural issues like immigration, drugs/criminal justice. I haven’t seen any radical tax proposals from the Republicans although we could use one (land tax or consumption tax) nor any radical proposals regarding the welfare state.
KevinDC
Oct 28 2020 at 2:09pm
I think it looks different from inside or outside the standard Republican/Democrat dichotomy. Being outside those political parties myself, the alleged “radical political differences” between them looks about as big to me as the alleged “radical theological differences” between Protestants and Catholics. In both cases I see groups with about a 98% overlap in their fundamental beliefs and policies who are bitterly and viciously at each other’s throats over the 2% uncommon ground. Yglesias sees extreme divides between the two, and I see the proverbial narcissism of small differences.
Mark Z
Oct 28 2020 at 3:18pm
I’ll grant that Republicans can be said to have extreme views on taxes, in often favoring large, unfunded tax cuts. On the welfare state though they’re not extreme by any definition. They more or less support the status quo, and have arguably given up on trying to reduce the welfare state in any meaningful way, so they’ve basically half done what Yglesias wants them to do.
Mark Z
Oct 28 2020 at 3:47pm
Didn’t Republicans sort of already try this with McCain and Romney? Both were more moderate than Reagan on economic policy, but both lost by healthy margin I’m also a bit surprised that expanding the welfare state tops immigration as a policy preference for Yglesias.
In any case, I will defy Scott’s rule of thumb and posit that the GOP has moved in its current populist direction because it’s the easiest way to win, despite my preferring they go in the opposite direction. I don’t think parties have much choice in where they go. Middle class, educated urban/suburbanites have been gradually leaving the GOP since he 1990s. What’s going on today I think is largely a consequence of compositional changes within the party. This pushes primary elections in a more populist direction, but it also reflects that it’s gotten harder for the GOP to win votes from educated professional types, increasing the incentives to instead try to win votes from socially conservative poor/working class types. Pleasant as it would be to believe they could win by turning back toward neoliberalism, I’m doubtful they could. That would require the educated middle class to vote according to their economic interests, and many don’t. Progressive politicians in many states have found that they can win the majority of well-off professionals even while campaigning on higher taxes.
Scott Sumner
Oct 28 2020 at 8:58pm
When there’s a very dysfunctional president like Hoover, Carter or George W. Bush, the voters usually turn to the other party for a few cycles. It wasn’t the fault of McCain and Romney. Plus, Obama was a much more popular candidate than Hillary Clinton.
robc
Nov 2 2020 at 8:09am
This year is going to test my “For, not against” theory of running against an incumbent.
My theory is you can’t beat an incumbent by running a not-X campaign. I came up with this theory in 2004, I don’t think it is anything earth shattering. I knew Bush would win because Kerry’s campaign was basically “vote for not-Bush.” It wasn’t even so much his campaign, as all the Democrats in the primary. Everyone was saying, it doesnt matter who wins, we are voting for not-Bush. And that doesn’t win. You have to give voters something to vote FOR.
Ditto Romney in 2012. And Biden’s campaign has been the most NOT X campaign I have ever seen. So despite polling, I am convinced Trump runs away with the election.
Clinton beat Bush 1 with a positive campaign. As did Reagan in 1980. If you are going to beat the incumbent, you can’t run against the incumbent. Maybe 1976 too, but I barely remember it and that was a weird one anyway. Not sure Ford really counts as an incumbent.
Gordon
Oct 28 2020 at 5:34pm
Your observation about intensity has certainly played a part in California’s gubernatorial politics. When Arnold “get to the chopper” Schwarzenegger first wanted to run for governor he openly stated his position as a social moderate and fiscal conservative which would certainly seem to be a likely winning combination. But this whipped up such a strong reaction from the social conservatives in the state’s GOP that he had no hope of getting the nomination in a normal election. It was only the 2003 recall of then governor Gray Davis that allowed Schwarzenegger to bypass the nominating process and get the votes to become governor.
BS
Oct 28 2020 at 6:03pm
Looks similar to a hypothetical discussion about “vote killer” issues somewhere, a while back. Party A polls 5 platform planks individually, finding that each has approval well above 50%. Loses the election. Why? Because each issue was “intensely” disliked by a subset of voters who were effectively single-issue voters on the issue, and there wasn’t much overlap across issues of the subsets, such that they formed a majority of voters.
Keenan
Nov 2 2020 at 10:26am
complex systems are usually not easily masterable
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