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This was written by Mr.Eyespy

There exists an economic principle called the “median voter model” that suggests if a politician wants to be successful he should find the person in his district, state or nation who is perfectly neutral on all issues, and the politician should court that person’s vote. It is that person, and that person only, who holds the winning vote.

Those candidates who can successfully represent leftist or conservative views yet still work themselves toward the middle where the most voters are will be the candidates who represent their respective parties in the general election.

And in a general election, when the two candidates have been decided, the victorious candidate will be the one between those two who can draw the votes in the middle of the model.

The median voter model, then, says simply that it is not the conservative Republican or the leftist Democrat who wins an election, but the most moderate Republican or most moderate Democrat who successfully seeks office.

The median voter model is one economic principle. Another is the idea that voters are “rationally ignorant” because, of course, no one single vote is going to win an election. Even in a close election, such as the one in Florida in 2000, the margin of votes separating the two candidates was still in the hundreds (how many hundreds will remain the subject of debate until all who care or ever cared are dead).

Though it is the voter situated perfectly in the middle (the median voter) that Republicans and Democrats attempt to woo every time they begin campaigning, it is not that single vote that wins the election. It is the ability to move that person and those like him that wins the election.

Therefore, economists will argue that it is a waste of time and effort for a person to cast a vote because one’s vote will make no difference in the election. Certainly, anyone who has voted and then reflected on that vote has come to the conclusion – whether the vote was cast for a winning candidate or a losing one – that “my vote really didn’t matter.”

The economists are essentially correct – voting is a waste of time. If the candidate you are rooting for wins by anything larger than one vote, you still have the satisfaction of seeing the other candidate defeated or the joy that the person who will be making laws to take away your money or your rights is the person you wanted. And you could have stayed at home. If the candidate you wanted to see defeated wins then you should have stayed home.

In 2002, I voted for Sonny Perdue to be the next governor of Georgia. Perdue won and became “the first Republican governor in 130 years” as people introducing him at speeches and appearances continue to remark. It was a narrow race, with the incumbent Democrat Governor Roy Barnes getting 937,062 votes and Perdue getting 1,041,677. A difference of 104,615 votes.

While that’s considered a fairly close conclusion – certainly not a landslide – it would have made no difference to Perdue or Barnes or anyone else in the state if I had not cast my vote.

Now, if the benefit is gained not by who wins or who loses but by the knowledge that I have performed my duty as a citizen, then arguably I could vote for anyone. I could have voted for the third party candidate on the ballot with Barnes and Perdue – Garrett Michael Hayes who received 47,122.

Certainly, unquestionably, Hayes is the candidate who most represented my politics in the fall of 2002. And if he had had 47,123 votes that would have sent a stronger message by one to the Democrats and Republicans that the Libertarians are coming to get them. What if I had convinced my wife to vote for Hayes, too. She voted for Perdue for many of the same reasons that I voted for Perdue, so it stands to reason that she could have voted for Hayes for the same reasons I might have voted for Hayes. And I know of at least three people in my wife’s office who voted for Perdue because of the influence my wife had on them. If their spouses were indirectly influenced by my wife – as I believe perhaps one of them may have been – then we’ve already given Mr. Hayes eight votes that would have pushed him into the 47,130s instead of the 47,120s. Barnes wouldn’t have won, Perdue wouldn’t have lost, but perhaps Garrett Michael Hayes would have felt a little better about the eight additional votes. I would have voted on principle, my wife would have voted on principle and the six people voting with us would have voted on my wife’s principles.

So instead of voting for a Republican just to beat a Democrat (or vice versa), isn’t it better to vote for the third party candidate who most closely represents one’s political philosophy?

Now you argue: “But, the Democratic candidate most closely represents my political philosophy. So I did cast my vote on principle.”

Or you might argue: “But, the Republican candidate most closely represents my political philosophy. So I did cast my vote on principle.”

Perhaps this is true. Perhaps these two candidates trying to push each other out of the very middle position do most closely represent your political philosophy. Perhaps, but not likely.

Very few people are actually centrists in their political philosophy. Those who bulge up the middle of the median voter model are people who vote but do not take an active role in thinking about or discussing political philosophy. Those are the people who are swayed back and forth by candidates who appeal to them on one level or another. People who might have voted to re-elect Bill Clinton in 1996 because 1993, 1994, 1995 and the first 10 months of 1996 had gone pretty well for them. These are the if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it voters.

Other median voters might catch a bit of a campaign speech on the news as they’re flipping to something else. If they hear something appealing to them, they will invest no more time or energy finding out about the candidates but simply vote for the candidate they caught on the news – provided they can remember his name.

I would venture to say that the majority of the voters who are responsible for our candidates moving toward the middle rather than standing for political principle are uninformed, ignorant of politics, centrists who may go this way one election and may go another way another election.

It is more likely, then, that you find yourself somewhere along the sloping lines of the median voter model – either on the left or on the right. Third parties may appeal to you on some issues and not on others, so you consider yourself a Republican or a Democrat. Probably, unless your considerations are only to see your party represented in the White House, you are often disappointed by the results of a primary election. I can think of one example of where this may not apply, and that was with the 2002 Republican Primary. John McCain, thanks to his voting record, had already – early in the primary – established himself as the most centrist between himself and Bush. Not the most centrist for the party, but for the nation as a whole. Republicans choosing a candidate viewed McCain as being too far to the left. This perception might have helped McCain beat Gore by a wider margin than Bush did, but it lost him the primary.

Candidates should always remember, do not move too far toward the center until after the primary.

So, perhaps the Republican Party platform does appeal to you, or the Democratic Party platform is exactly your cup of tea, but these centrist moving candidates surely do not.

Have you been satisfied with George W. Bush’s willingness to work with Ted Kennedy on education reform or was the $400 billion Medicare prescription drug benefit – the largest social spending program since Johnson’s Great Society – what you had in mind when you voted for a Republican?

So if Republican and Democratic candidates, in seeking office or reelection, so freely abandon “their base” and their party’s platform in an effort to woo the median voter, then I find it highly unlikely that the people who win elections ever honestly represent the political philosophies of those who have political philosophies. Instead, I think the candidates who win elections represent the political philosophies of those who do not have political philosophies, those who can be swayed by any number of insignificant things but never a belief in the role of government.

Third parties, as they are known, abandon the economic principle of the median voter model. They do not dispute its legitimacy as a phenomenon of voting habits, but simply choose to stand on principle rather than woo the centrist voters.