Normally, “moderate” refers to a position within a range. To try to actually position a candidate, you’d want to compare his set of positions with those of voters. I highly doubt Weld was to the left of the Democrats on social issues, but suppose he was between most Republicans outside the northeast, and the Democrats. Gingrich, you may recall, referred to Romney as “a Massachusetts moderate.”
Here is a very nice attempt to do exactly what I describe. It shows Trump evolving from populist positions to conservative. It shows Sanders and Bloomberg shifting toward left-liberal. The Trump part of the analysis fits nicely with the criticisms of him based on old positions, which criticism didn’t really stick. Wouldn’t we expect Trump to be changing at least some issues as he shifts from Democrat to Republican? Also, as he gets older and wiser, and maybe even because he married to such a strong woman as Melania? I think Trump’s evolution is completely understandable, although I personally have hardly “evolved” in my own thinking since I was 14.
https://espnfivethirtyeight.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/silver-bloomberg-11.png
Trump’s big advantage is that he can appeal to both conservatives and populists, presuming Hillary gets the Democratic nomination. This is his landslide potential. The Libertarians, on the other hand, will draw from people who aren’t really on the left-right spectrum. Maybe they’ll pull a little from both Democrats and the Republicans, based on the perceived personal shortcomings of those two parties’ candidates. So, the Libertarians aren’t a real threat to Trump, even though both were members of the Republican Party back in the days when Trump was a member of the Democratic Party. (It’s actually more complicated than that.)
