Don’t assume moderate Democrats crave centrism

Another election cycle, another round of well-resourced, centrist groups recycling the same arguments you could have overheard renting movies from Blockbuster in the ‘90s.

Because a plurality of voters identify themselves as “moderate,” they say, the path to winning elections is a version of “combative centrism” — pick fights with Trump, but also nominate candidates who break with the left, avoid promises of transformative change and don’t sound too threatening to corporate and wealthy interests.

It is an argument we have all heard before, and one that relies on oversimplifying what voters actually mean when they call themselves “moderate.”

The evidence that centrism itself is an electoral advantage is mixed and considerably weaker than its advocates suggest. As data journalist G. Elliott Morris has documented, claims about the electoral benefits of moderation are often overstated. Moderate Democrats may perform slightly better than a typical Democrat, but the estimated advantage is small and surrounded by considerable uncertainty.

More importantly, moderate is a description of how voters see themselves, not a prescriptive policy platform. It’s wrong to assume that voters think about ideology or see a choice between a centrist candidate and a progressive candidate in the same way political pundits and operatives do. A voter can call themselves moderate and still want candidates who champion economic populism and challenge the political establishment.

Recent public opinion research has made clear that voters, including moderates, are deeply skeptical of concentrated wealth and corporate........

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