Median Voter Theorem and Election 2004

Initially, I was going to blog on the players' union in baseball,and how, as an interest group it provides benefits to its members, however, class discussion today convinced me to tackle the idea of the applicability of the MVT to this past presidential election. As I sat in class, and listened to the debate over the similarities and differences of Bush and Kerry I remembered a piece on CNN.COM Link This site illustrates all of the candidates' platforms on the issues. There are different categories of issues, and by clicking on them we can see what the candidates think on each of the issues within the category. This site provides quite a bit of evidence that would support the median voter theorem. First, it should be noted that whomever made the point in class that the candidates differ on many of the social issues was absolutely correct. The site shows that Bush and Kerry had opposing views on abortion, the death penalty, and gay adoption. However, these differences don't necessarily refute the MVT. As Downs discusses, the idea is that because both candidates value the median voter (who decides the election) they move closer and closer to the middle. By doing this the candidates begin to adopt similar platforms, thus in the end become essentially identical. He also acknowledges that this is done within reason, so that to alienate the extremist voters belonging to their own party. If we look at the issues listed above, on which the candidates differ, its fairly obvious that their opinions fall in line the views of their party. That is most conservatives oppose abortion and gay rights, meanwhile most liberals support these rights. Thus, it is reasonably inferred that Bush and Kerry's views on these issues were merely means upon which to maintain support from their extremist supporters. Additionally, further examination of the issues reveals that Bush and Kerry had roughly the same views on the state fiscal crisis, budget deficits, and drug costs. The most interesting issue was, by far, gay marriage. As we saw, this issue was key in the election, and highly discussed in the presidential debates. Its no surprise that Bush is against gay marriage, as he supports an amendment to the constitution to ban gay marriage. What is interesting, is that Kerry, paradoxically, is against gay marriage, but supports giving them benefits and supports their rights as gay couples. How do we explain this paradox? Why would Kerry support gay rights and even gay couples rights, yet be opposed to gay marriage? The most plausible explanation is that he was making an attempt to win median vote. More of the median voters were opposed to gay marriage than those who were not, so by taking the platform of anti-gay marriage Kerry was attempting to move toward the center and capture the median vote. If you couple this with the fact that Kerry supported the war in Iraq (but insisted Bush misled America) it is becoming fairly obvious that on most of the key issues Kerry and Bush have remarkably similar views. All things considered, then the 2004 election actually provided a lot of evidence to support the median voter theorem, and suggest that Downs was not far off in his thinking that the median voter wins, and as a result the candidates are very similar. While Bush and Kerry certainly were not identical, it appears as if they shared more similarities than differences (somewhat to validating Downs' conclusion), and even these differences (it can be argued) were merely an attempt to prevent alienation of their extremist supporters. After viewing their stances on many of the different issues I would certainly not classify Bush and Kerry as identical, they certainly share common views on many of the key issues, leading me to believe that the Median Voter Theorem has at least some merit, and that Rational Choice Theory has taught us a lot in this area of economics/politics.