The original paper is smart and worth reading! I just don’t happen to think it is correct. People seem to like moderate positions *a lot* when they know about them.

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A better explanation is hinted at in another recent paper by Colao, Broockman, Huber and Kalla. Voters just don’t know that much about where individual candidates stand on issues. This has very different implications!

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If the lesson is that candidates should not blindly adopt positions of the other party, then I agree.

But I don’t think this explains why we don’t find the large benefits of candidate moderation that we might expect.

My comment documents enough other cases of this to put the argument of the paper in doubt.

I don’t think BK put their thumb on the scale here- defining the middle is hard when there are almost no real moderates to point to!

Another example: for a Democrat to support raising the Social Security retirement age would not be a move to the middle- it would be a move to right of President Trump on that issue.

The problem is that two Democrats voted for H.R. 28, which would have banned transwomen from women’s sports, and other prominent Democrats have voiced that view as well.

Deferring to the leagues would place a candidate to the left of these Democrats. This looks like overshooting.

They define the conservative position as a ban on transwomen competing in women’s sports. Fair enough.

But they define the “elite middle” as “local schools and sports leagues should be allowed to decide.”

But this is exactly what happens in BK’s experiment.

Take the case of transgender participation in sports. This is the case where they find a party (here the Republicans) loses the most vote share by moderating.

It is essential that they don’t “overshoot” the center.

It wouldn’t be surprising if candidates lost vote share by trading their party’s popular positions for the other party’s unpopular positions, and voters wouldn’t need to be cross-pressured to dislike candidates who overshoot.

A lot rides on how they define these positions. But defining them is not easy!

We want to understand the effect of a candidate moving from a position that is typical for their party to a position that is either moderate for that party or right “in between” the two parties.

The problem here is with the evidence.

BK present people with a candidate choice experiment.

The Democratic candidate takes either the “liberal” or “elite middle” position.

The Republican takes either the “conservative” or “elite middle” position.

BK come up with the concept of the “elite middle.” They argue:

1. Moving towards the elite middle is not always moving toward the median *voter*

2. Cross-pressured voters will sometimes like candidates less for moving to the middle

So far so good.

I’ve written a comment on a recent piece by @dbroockmand.bsky.social and @jkalla.bsky.social.

I agree heartily that voters care about issues. But I don’t think that their particular explanation for the small effects of candidate moderation hold (much) water. 🧵

ctausanovitch.com/elusive_elit...

Do Americans' policy priorities vary by income or education?

Using millions of conjoints with almost half a million respondents, @ctausanovitch.bsky.social and I show little evidence of such variance; voter priorities are very similar!

Now in print at @psrm.bsky.social

bit.ly/3E1DOST

🏫Do income and education shape people's priorities?

➡️Contrary to conventional wisdom, @ctausanovitch.bsky.social @derekholliday.com show that income and education are not strongly associated with differences in what people care about www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #FirstView

This paper from B&L in APSR First View responds to our study (Fowler et al. 2023). We very much appreciate the dialogue. However, we believe our results are robust to the exercise B&L have undertaken and have produced a series of analyses to support that conclusion. tinyurl.com/5a7x26e7 (1/7)

Very proud that my student @derekholliday.com has won the @apsa.bsky.social State and Local Politics Section's best dissertation award for his dissertation, The Reaches and Limits of Nationalization in U.S. Politics!

Can't recommend Derek enough to departments looking to hire junior in AP!