An implication of Downs’s discussion of the Median Voter Theorem is that the political parties will reflect the distribution of the electorate as a whole. The example often used is that of a normal distribution, where the largest number of voters are in the middle of the political spectrum. Here, the median, mean, and mode are all the same and the median voter will in the middle of the ideological spectrum. Because the median voter decides the election, both parties will have an incentive to moderate their positions.
This Pew survey compares the ideological spectrum of American voters from 1994 to 2017. The idealized Median Voter scenario presented above seems to fit the United States in 1994. The Median Republican and the median Democrat are both near the center of the ideological spectrum and there is significant overlap between the two bases. By 2017, however, the situation had dramatically changed. The U.S. electorate developed a pronounced bimodal distribution as Democrats and Republicans drifted from the center of the political spectrum. From this data we can predict a shift in who is likely to vote or join a party. The growing ideological distinction between the two parties may lower indifference and encourage extremists to vote. Moderates, on the other hand, will be increasingly alienated from both parties.
Section one of this report from 2014 shows how the parties have changed in response to this polarization. Fifty years ago, it was typical for Republicans and Democrats in Congress to adopt both liberal and conservative stances. By 2014, however, there was no ideological overlap between the two groups- the most liberal Republican was further right that the most conservative Democrat. Unfortunately, as Downs argues, polarization among the parties tends to produce instability in governance, as each party will implement policies that are radically opposed by the other party (120).
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I went back and read this blog post after Professor Coppock spoke about it in class, because Downs’ paper is one of my favorites from this semester and I was interested in reading your thoughts about it. The Pew research study you linked is really telling about the current political climate of our country, and I wanted to expand a bit on the potential implications Downs’ warns us of when there is an extremely polarized and bimodal voter distribution. Downs describes a political climate where the voter distribution is extremely bimodal as a “political cycle typical of revolutions” (120). This type of political climate is marked by radical switches “from one extreme to the other” (120). Though I wouldn’t go so far as to say our country is in the midst of a total revolution, there are serious implications from this bimodal distribution that can be applied today. When one end of the spectrum has power, the other side feels oppressed and feels as if their concerns fall on deaf ears. Therefore, when this party does eventually come to power, they want to undo close to everything the opposing party built up before them. As a result, the persons who fall under the opposing mode rally around the shared notion of being unheard and unrepresented further pushing out the modes. It is so clear that this cyclical nature is true of our nation’s current state—the momentum behind Bernie Sanders and other further left candidates during this election’s Democratic primary was even stronger than in 2016 which is demonstrative of a group of people who feel neglected and left behind by our current President. While these implications all seem like doom and gloom, I think the model can actually offer us a little bit of hope. Say Biden wins the 2020 presidential election: if he can resist putting forth policy and ideology that completely opposes the rival mode, he has the power to initiate the breaking of the toxic and cyclical political environment that has come to be.
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