Cheerio, median-voter

America’s upcoming midterm election has raised much debate on how the spatial distribution of voters will determine the outcome. Contrary to past elections, Democrats and Republicans have forgotten about the median-voter and instead, have become more extreme in their speech to capture those consistently liberal or conservative, respectively. As a result, more and more moderates have decided to tune out and rationally abstain from voting since their votes will not be decisive. This suggests that the spatial distribution of voters for this particular election is heavy-weighted on the tails. For instance, according to this article, a survey by the Pew Research Center found that “73% of ‘consistently conservative’ Americans are likely to cast a ballot on November 4th, along with 58% of consistent liberals”. The question then remains on which party captured more extremists and will guarantee victory this upcoming Tuesday. 

Analyzing this situation under Down’s spatial location theory, we can expect the voting turnout to be determined by the abstention rates on both sides. Thus, in this case, we need to assume away the assumption of no abstentions implied in his model. If abstention were symmetrically spread across de distribution, then the median-voter would still remain as the decisive voter. However, if abstention is more likely in young people, then Republicans will have a better chance of winning, assuming that the Republican party has more elder citizens than the Democrats. The challenge remains on moving as much citizens to the ballot box this Tuesday. As parties have said their goodbyes to the median-voter, ironically, the midterm election will be determined by abstentions, not voters.