by CKR
It’s said that Karl Rove likes to assemble his majority from the extreme, rather than the center. There’s an inherent mathematical problem with that. I’d argue that it’s inherently unstable.
Let’s say that political opinion follows a probability distribution, a bell curve. In that case, we’re talking about a spectrum of views from right to left. This is a typical bell curve. The number of people holding ideas at various points on the spectrum is proportional to the height of the curve, as the number of people is also proportional to the area under the curve, if we look at a broader range of views. There are more people holding mid-range views (by quite a bit) than at either extreme.
This figure cuts off the ends of the bell curve. But that’s okay, those ends are tiny and taper off slowly to nothing: the diehard Communists at one end, say, and the “let’s build a fortress in northern Idaho” militia at the other.
The Rovian strategy starts at one end, beyond that 3S mark, and works back to the center until there’s 51%.
It’s actually a bit more complicated because various blocs (anti-abortion, pro-guns, pro-Ten-Commandments-monuments, pro-war) are assembled, but I think we’re close enough to make the point. This is an idealized curve, and the real curve may be less symmetrical, even lumpy. On this curve, you’d have to go just beyond the line marked X to get that majority.
In Rove’s strategy, you hang on to the extreme, which is the thinnest slice. This risks alienating voters in the midrange. Because many people in that middle share moderate views, alienating them leads to peeling off large swaths of voters at a time under that highest point of the curve. So things can change quickly. “The base” is in the mathematical tail, fewer people with extreme views, and wide shifts in policy (the horizontal axis) are necessary to keep enough of them happy to assure that majority. Another way to keep them interested is to stoke the partisan fires so that each and every one gets out and votes.
The more conventional strategy of governing from the center starts at the line marked X and works out in both directions. If you irritate people on either side, the numbers are fewer than those squarely in the center and become even fewer as the views become more extreme. The voting majority may shift slightly from right to left, but it’s easier to maintain a majority. “The base” is the middle, probably more tolerant of small policy shifts, and only small shifts are needed to maintain a majority.
Moving to politics from mathematics, those on the extremes have no place to go. Extraordinary circumstances would be required for them to vote with the opposition (that thin slice on the other side of the distribution), but they may stay home and not vote for anyone, making their thin slice of the distribution even thinner.
So why would someone take the route of building toward the center from one extreme? This strategy would seem to make sense only for people pushing an extreme ideology. It’s got an edge of desperation, and as you try to convince people closer to the center, it’s likely that you’ll have to soften those hard edges of your ideology. That can be done genuinely, in which case the base is irritated, or by implication or misrepresentation.
A centrist strategy may also misrepresent to the fringes. But it will remain more stable because those to whom it is misrepresented are a smaller fraction of the voters: toward the edges of the distribution rather than the center.
Update: More here.