As a result, “[Romney] didn’t have
to worry about the nut balls he was running against in the G.O.P. primary and
was not forced to cater just to the Tea Party base. So he finally took out the Etch a Sketch and
moved to the center.”
While Mr. Friedman shows some disdain for Romney’s
swerve center, from an economics’ prospective, it is perfectly rational for Romney
to adjust his policies for the United States presidential election. After all, the very first assumption of the
Median Voter Theorem is that candidates are vote maximizers, and therefore create
their policies on what gives them the best chance of winning the election
(rather than on what they actually believe).
When Romney was running in the primaries, the median voter for the
Republican primaries was further right than the median voter is in the general
election due to the large Tea Party base.
As a result, it makes sense that Romney’s policies would be more
conservative, reflecting his attempt to gain the vote of the median Republican voter
and therefore win the primaries. Following
the Republican National Convention, Romney is now officially the only
Republican candidate. Therefore, it is
not surprising that his policies have adjusted accordingly and become centered.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Romney's Repositioning After the Presidential Debate
The Presidential debate last week highlighted Mitt Romney’s
ability to appeal to the average voter.
According to an Op-Ed
in the New York Times, it was the first time Romney spoke to the American
people at large rather than to just a subset of Republican voters.
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2 comments:
I agree with you that Romney has been acting according to the Median Voter Theorem. I would like to go further and say that this should come as no shock to anyone upset over his mobility because it was predictable. Romney went after the median voter in the Republican primaries, where his views were less moderate than they were at the debate last week. In this situation, the distribution of voters was not symmetric but rather skewed to the left. This means that the median voter was farther right on the poltical spectrum and Romeny, following the MVT, appealed to people in this area. Although the assumption of a symmetric distribution was not upheld during the primaries, the Median Voter Theorem was still able to be accurate.
During the debate, the distribution Romney was addressing was much more symmetric. The median voter had moved left on the political spectrum and Romney followed. It seems like some critics are upset with Romney’s actions, for example Mr. Friedman above, but they should not be because this was a rational and expected move in accordance with the MVT.
They also should nt be surprised because appealing to the average voter is not a new political phenomena. In fact, some accused Obama of the exact same thing in 2008.
“....the Left continues to discover what it refused to see earlier: Obama is a moderate politician (which I do not view as an inherently negative quality). If Obama is not a moderate, he has strongly indicated that he will likely govern from the middle nevertheless, probably in order to maximize his political support and ensure reelection.”
As you can see, it is common for politicians to become progressivlet moderate in order to appeal to the average voter and gain the most support. This is not a specails situation involving Romney nor Obama. And this is exactly what the conclusion of the Median Voter Theorem says. There is a predictable, stable outcome in the middle. Whether this “middle” be in the center of all the Republian, Democratic or American voters as a whole does not matter because one or both of th candidate will end up there anyway.
Sorry! I could not figure out how to hyperlink in a comment so here is the link to article:
http://dissentingjustice.blogspot.com/2008/12/chicken-little-politics-moderate-obama.html
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