Primary voters in presidential elections are remarkably moderate. They choose Clinton over Bernie, Biden over insane woke monstrosities, and then were denied a primary choice in 2024 by a party apparatus who let’s just say didn’t make wise choices.
Biden didn’t govern moderate because he’s senile and turned it over to progressive staffers, but moderation is what voters wanted out of him.
Trump is “moderate” on entitlements and until Iran moderate on foreign policy (the only gop candidate in 2016 to disown Iraq). His culture and immigration stance is basically bill clinton 1996.
With the exception of Ron DeSantis in 2024, I can think of nobody better running I the gop primary that ever polled well, and DeSantis ran a very poor campaign.
Where you get runaway candidates in the primary is where the general election doesn’t matter. Such as deep blue cities and states.
You're overcomplicating things. In a primary, the voters are the left/right-most half of the general electorate, and they choose the candidate that represents the median primary voter. So it'll roughly be a 25th/75th percentile candidate instead of the median/50th percentile candidate
And candidates are usually smart and try to tack back to center for the general, but can only disavow what they proclaimed a month ago so much
I'm confused - wouldn't basic game theory say that the instant you get to the second-stage general election that you immediately pander to the new median voter who is more moderate than the median voter in the primary? It seems like we need some rationale here.
How about: "primaries pull candidates away from the general-election median to pander to the partisan median voter. The political commitments (vague I know) required to win the primary then make it costly (although still possible) for nominees to move back toward the center afterward." That explains why we might observe token rather than full moderation in the general election.
Bryan, I just wanted to let you know that your "Libertarian Purity Test" is currently unavailable. According to the Internet Archive, it may have been unavailable since March 22 of this year. When I go to http://www.bcaplan.com/cgi-bin/purity.cgi, I get an "Internal Server Error" message.
Primary voters in presidential elections are remarkably moderate. They choose Clinton over Bernie, Biden over insane woke monstrosities, and then were denied a primary choice in 2024 by a party apparatus who let’s just say didn’t make wise choices.
Biden didn’t govern moderate because he’s senile and turned it over to progressive staffers, but moderation is what voters wanted out of him.
Trump is “moderate” on entitlements and until Iran moderate on foreign policy (the only gop candidate in 2016 to disown Iraq). His culture and immigration stance is basically bill clinton 1996.
With the exception of Ron DeSantis in 2024, I can think of nobody better running I the gop primary that ever polled well, and DeSantis ran a very poor campaign.
Where you get runaway candidates in the primary is where the general election doesn’t matter. Such as deep blue cities and states.
Aren't Democratic primaries held very differently than GOP ?
You're overcomplicating things. In a primary, the voters are the left/right-most half of the general electorate, and they choose the candidate that represents the median primary voter. So it'll roughly be a 25th/75th percentile candidate instead of the median/50th percentile candidate
And candidates are usually smart and try to tack back to center for the general, but can only disavow what they proclaimed a month ago so much
You say "Voters have a longer memory for inflation than for other economic variables, and they hate inflation."
It's probably more of a price level effect than an inflation effect
I'm confused - wouldn't basic game theory say that the instant you get to the second-stage general election that you immediately pander to the new median voter who is more moderate than the median voter in the primary? It seems like we need some rationale here.
How about: "primaries pull candidates away from the general-election median to pander to the partisan median voter. The political commitments (vague I know) required to win the primary then make it costly (although still possible) for nominees to move back toward the center afterward." That explains why we might observe token rather than full moderation in the general election.
Bryan, I just wanted to let you know that your "Libertarian Purity Test" is currently unavailable. According to the Internet Archive, it may have been unavailable since March 22 of this year. When I go to http://www.bcaplan.com/cgi-bin/purity.cgi, I get an "Internal Server Error" message.
This is a pretty good summary, and matches many of my thoughts. Question: How does this compare to Buchanan's public choice theory on this topic?