Earlier this month, Thomas Edsall published a column in the New York Times titled, “Even if the Democrats can move to the center, it may not help.” In it, the eminent political analyst argued that “there is evidence that the process of moderation has the potential to result in unintended adverse consequences.”

Edsall was referring to a new working paper from Stanford University political scientist Adam Bonica and two co-authors. As Bonica explained in an interview with the Times, his research points toward “a clear conclusion: There appears to be very little electoral advantage from running to the center in contemporary congressional elections.”

According to Bonica, although moderate candidates were a little better at persuading voters to support them, this advantage was tiny and potentially outweighed by moderation’s negative impact on turnout.

“Democrats have achieved their greatest electoral successes precisely in cycles (2008 and 2018) when they did not moderate relative to Republicans,” Bonica told the Times, while “in cycles where Democrats ran more moderate candidates (like 2010 and 2014), their electoral performance was notably weaker.” He also reiterated these claims in a viral Bluesky thread.

This story was first featured in The Rebuild.

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All this has triggered a lively debate about how Democrats should weigh Bonica’s evidence against the many studies showing that moderation is electorally beneficial........

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