Moderates

Moderates are often forgotten in modern research on the purportedly polarized and hyperpartisan American voters. Some have pointed out that many Americans appear moderate, but others contend that these apparent moderates are actually politically unsophisticated or conflicted extremists. We develop a method to distinguish between genuine moderates, inattentive respondents, and people whose policy positions are not well summarized by a single liberal-conservative dimension. We find that most of the respondents who give a mix of liberal and conservative answers to policy questions are genuine spatial centrists though almost 30 percent of survey respondents express policy views better described as inattentive or unconstrained than by a single ideological dimension. Having identified different types of survey respondents, we investigate their political behaviors. Moderates and those who don’t map onto the single dimension participate less in politics than liberals and conservatives. Even so, they are especially consequential for electoral selection and accountability because they are most likely to change their vote choices in response to candidate quality and ideology. Our results suggest a need for renewed attention to the middle of the American political spectrum.