New Research on How Moderation Works
Multidimensionality, Aggregation, and The Golden 4x9x10
Matthew Yglesias had this week’s must-read, summarizing new research from two prominent scholars in the New York Times.
David Broockman and Joshua Kalla’s new paper - helpfully titled “Should Moving to the Middle Win Candidates Votes? It Depends Where Voters Are" - affirms core Welcome theses: voters care about issues, and the electoral benefits of moderating are underrated.
But it wasn’t just a high-level validation. They found that the type and amount of moderation matter:
Where the Party is Misaligned: Moderating is most effective on issues where your party is misaligned with public opinion. This is true for both parties.
Multidimensionality Risk: Voters care about multiple issues, which presents cross-pressure risks - moderating on a single issue can pick up some votes while losing others.
… and Aggregation Opportunity: Because voters care about multiple issues, the effects pile up as candidates move towards voters on multiple issues.
Towards the Voter, not Other Party: Moving towards the opposition party does not have the benefit of moderating by moving towards the median voter.
Broockman captures the intraparty debates on moderation succinctly, explaining that when research shows moving towards the elite middle helps only modestly, “it is easy to look at this and say ‘voters don’t care about moderation/issues.’ But the averages masks enormous variation across people/issues.”
The Golden 4 x 9 x 10
Let’s look at this in practice, from a case study in Deciding to Win:
I'm fighting against Biden's electric car mandate while voting to increase domestic oil and gas production, working with Republicans to secure the border, and standing with law enforcement against defunding the police.
This is an excerpt of an ad for Rep. Jared Golden. In a span of 9 seconds, Golden hits four issues where he differentiates from the party. And not just any issues - on issues where the party is misaligned with voters.
Golden is the only Democrat to win a district Trump won by 10 points.
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that those four aggressive moderation points in nine seconds did more than the 281 subscribers he has on YouTube.
Some in the Democratic Party think voters can be tricked by TikTok videos. They think that, when issues come up where the party is misaligned with voters, candidates should just dodge the hard questions. But as Lauren Egan wrote this week, the Shut-Up-And-Pivot Approach Won’t Work for Democrats.
Golden’s ad hit four areas where the party was misaligned with voters. Add them up, and you have literally the only Democrat winning a Trump +10 district.
Four policy positions in nine seconds to win a district Trump won by ten.
It wasn’t pivoting away from discomfort, or dressing up like a blue-collar character in a sitcom.
It was policy, on top of policy, on top of policy. Moderation worked, and the benefits of each moderating policy aggregated.
And that’s a good thing. We live in a democracy. Let’s act like it.
Check out the full paper at this link, Yglesias in the NYT here, and a helpful Twitter thread summary from the researchers here.
But Jared Golden isn’t running again, and even though he voted with Trump on those issues, he still received too many death threats to feel comfortable remaining in Congress. Still, Democrats should be sensitive to the feelings of their constituents, and know what issues unite and divide them.
The price of health insurance, housing and hamburgers, corruption, the money spent on wars, and that we have a pedophile as president are issues all opposition candidates can run on.