Close Please enter your Username and Password
Reset Password
If you've forgotten your password, you can enter your email address below. An email will then be sent with a link to set up a new password.
Cancel
Reset Link Sent
Password reset link sent to
Check your email and enter the confirmation code:
Don't see the email?
  • Resend Confirmation Link
  • Start Over
Close
If you have any questions, please contact Customer Service
Blogs > Adolpho > My Blog


Adolpho 68M
3303 posts
8/28/2015 9:22 pm
The mythical centrist

From: Hunter Steilman

There may be no more persistent myth in political analysis than the notion that the wisest, most moderate political position on an issue lies somewhere between the partisans of one party and the partisans of another. It presumes that on any given issue, both parties must be wrong–and by an exactly equal amount—and that the therefore most "rational" voters would therefore gravitate towards a theoretically "correct" position between the two.
The problem is, as David Roberts explains, that's an entirely false notion of who "moderates" actually are:

"The relative prevalence of moderates in popular polling is almost certainly a statistical artifact. A voter with one extreme conservative opinion (round up and expel all illegal immigrants immediately) and one extreme liberal opinion (institute a 100 percent tax on wealth over a million dollars) will be marked, for the purposes of polling, as a moderate. What's really being measured is heterogeneity of opinion, not centrism. In fact, most moderates have at least one opinion that is well outside the mainstream of either party."



×
×