There Are No Moderates -- Digby

[erronis]

https://digbysblog.net/2026/02/03/there-are-no-moderates/

I've been saying this for years. G. Elliott Morris does some sophisticated analysis of the voting population and proves, once and for all, that this idea that there is a huge number of people "in the middle" who are some who splitting the difference between the policies of the two parties which makes them "moderate" is nonsense. That group is just disengaged people who have no ideology at all:

The vast majority of the "moderates" are just completely non-ideological. Just over 80 percent of the respondents who scored between a -2 and 2 on either economic or social ideology had an ideological thinking score of 0 or 1. These "moderates" are not moderate, they're disengaged. They didn't express centrist views balancing left and right, or a preference for moderation on policy. They expressed no ideological views at all.

I took all 4,500 classified respondents in Steve's data and calculated the following composition of the electorate based on voters scores on the three variables ("ideological thinking," left-right economic policy, left-right social policy).

Disengaged (34%): Low ideology scores and no clear issue positions
Issue-focused but not ideological (25%): Mention economic or social concerns without ideological framing
Ideological right (19%): Clear conservative positioning
Ideological left (16%): Clear liberal positioning
Mixed/moderate (6%): True centrists or ideological misfits

The "center" of American politics isn't populated by careful centrists weighing "both sides" of the policy debate, or people who want the Democrats or Republicans to retreat from extremism. It's populated by people who want their daily lives to be easier and aren't really thinking about politics at all.

I have often quoted from this piece by Chris Hayes from over 20 years ago. It's as correct today as it was then and yet political strategists are just allergic to accepting this notion and planning accordingly. You can't win those people over with issue oriented campaigns because they don't understand politics enough (and don't care.) It certainly doesn't mean that "moderating" on issues is what they are looking for.

. . .