great way to insure you get a “minority” of the votes cast
The best way to insure that you only get a minority is to position yourself to appeal to a minority. That is what happens when you ignore your base. You know your candidate is NOT going to appeal to the other side. And if you candidate does not appeal to the base, the only appeal your candidate as is to the so called “middle”. And since the middle tends to split pretty evenly, your candidate is just pushing votes away by ignoring the base.
Many people assert that based upon voter registrations, there are roughly 32% dem, 30% Independant, and 32% Republicans (allowing 6% for other parties and local variations). The ASSUMPTION is that the Independents are monolithic and are all middle ground in their political views. Most being influenced by the latest best sounding sound bite. But that is not the case.
Many are so fed up with their party, that they have opted to register as Independent. Yes, there are people left of the democrats and people to the right of republicans. In the case of the republicans, the GOPe has shifted so far to the left that the base is feeling that they have been abandoned. And subsequently have stopped supporting these GOPe Dem-lite candidates. I know, ‘cause I am one of them.
If you want a majority, then the GOP needs to nominate a candidate that the PARTY (as a whole) can support. The Dems won because they were able to motivate 5 million more people to vote. They did that by appealing to their base, not by moving to the middle. Overall, only 43% of the population voted in 2012 (129 million total votes). The winning margin 5 million out of 129 million was less than 4%.