With America so evenly split politically, compromise would seem
to beckon. For policy, it offers possible solution to long
festering problems. For politics, it offers the prospect of seizing
the center on which victory appears to balance.
However it is neither policy nor politics that reveals why
“center politics” does not prevail… it is economics. Near-balance
makes compromise less likely, not more so, because this when its
risk/reward ratio — i.e., its political cost — is
highest.
America’s close and deep divide is plain. Barack Obama won
the popular vote in 2008, 52.5 percent to 46.2 percent. According
to November 2010 midterm election exit polling, Obama’s
approval/disapproval rating was 44 percent/55 percent. According to
a 3/5 Gallup tracking poll, Obama’s approval/disapproval
ratings are 45 percent/48 percent. And according to the latest
NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, he leads Mitt Romney, his
closest challenger, 50 percent to 44 percent.
Average these numbers from the last four years and you
come up with a 47.9 percent to 48.3 percent difference. That’s
extraordinarily close.
Such even balance implies the electorate’s center is
determinant. So the incentive would seem to be to boldly strike
toward it: Offer compromise and play for election-deciding
Independent voters.
The reason a “play to the center” strategy does not
prevail is that a candidate can win with a vote percentage well
below 50 percent. Clinton twice won the presidency with sub-50
percent levels — 42.9 percent in 1992 and 49.2 percent in 1996. As
2000 showed when Bush beat Gore, even having more popular votes
does not guarantee victory.
Sub-majority victories often come when one party splits
its base — providing the other party a golden opportunity. Nader
did it in 2000, costing Gore Florida and the election; Perot did it
in 1992, costing Bush I what should have been a convincing victory;
and famously, Teddy Roosevelt did it in 1912, making the incumbent
Taft finish third.
These elections demonstrate the risk inherent in “playing
to the center.” With the two sides as evenly balanced as they are
now, the voters up for grabs in the center represent a small
fraction of the total voters. To make a concerted play for them, a
party simultaneously risks its base supporters.
As the two sides both near a majority, the ratio of
potential supporters to secure supporters decreases. The “reward”
therefore decreases too. Conversely, the risk increases as the
proportion of secure supporters to potential supporters
increases.
The opposite dynamic also occurs. A party is most
motivated to “play to the center” when it is further from the
majority because its risk to reward ratio decreases. Knowing its
base is insufficient to win, further reducing it does not risk
defeat — only greater defeat — while augmenting it offers
victory’s only chance.
Who are these base supporters? The reliable regulars —
those who vote, and vote for your party, in high percentages.
Liberals and conservatives are perfect examples. Liberals accounted
for 20 percent of voters in 2010 and voted 90 percent Democratic.
Conservatives accounted for 42 percent of voters in 2010 and voted
84% Republican.
The center’s Independents are not only the hardest to get,
but to retain. In 2008, they voted 51 percent for Democrats; in
2010, they voted 56 percent Republican.
The risk of “playing to the center” is real. In 1988, Bush
I made his “no new taxes pledge.” In search of a bipartisan deficit
reduction deal — the kind so many pundits profess should be in
reach today — he broke that pledge. It cost him, and his party,
dearly. He did not gain the center, he lost the right. And the
election.
While the risk is real, the reward of “playing to the
center” can be illusory — not just in practice as in 1992, but in
theory. Despite polls showing “undecided voters” right up to
Election Day, in reality they may never decide on a candidate. They
may decide to not vote at all.
Going into a given election, the absolute number of votes
needed to win is unknown. What the parties do “know” is that of all
the potential voters out there, their base comprises those on whom
they can most depend. The closer the election, the more the contest
becomes about who wins the most of these.
It is a political curiosity therefore that the closer the
election, and the more its outcome appears to be dependent on the
center, the more the two political parties are driven from the
center. It is not simply ideology, and it certainly is not
irrational. It is economics: the center’s incremental cost
increases as the number of voters in the center
decreases.
For those imagining that America’s tight political balance
is pushing it toward compromise, it is actually serving to pull it
further apart.
