"Moderate" a Losing Strategy

Thomas B. Edsall reports for The New York Times on political science research findings which strongly suggest that earlier identification of a large group of "moderate" voters was greatly overstated. The reason: this group that was neither liberal nor conservative lumped together true moderates, populists, and libertarians.

The political group data look like this:
Liberals             19%
Populists           11%
Moderates         21%
Libertarians       22%
Conservatives   27%

Populists are conservative socially and liberal economically. Libertarians are just the reverse: conservative economically and liberal socially. True moderates take middle-of-the-road views about many issues.

Because of the conflicting values of populists and libertarians, luring both into a centerist party is a nonstarter. The values of each are anathema to the other.

A fruitful area of political science investigation would be to discover how libertarians and populists decide upon which aspect of their beliefs to vote, and under what conditions. For example, do they emphasize the economic when the economy is hurting or the social when their values are threatened?

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Maybe there are more than five groups. Suppose there are at least two subgroups of libertarians: one being liberals who are stingy and another being conservatives who want the government to leave people alone? Or two subgroups of populists: one of conservatives who need a government handout and another of liberals who are also religious?

The possible slicing and dicing of the electorate is almost limitless. In places like Italy and Israel, a separate political party exists for every distinct constellation of beliefs; thus governments are awkward coalitions which are often unstable and short-lived.