Campaigning actually involves fairly little persuasion; very little fighting over that last one-to-five percent. It's mostly identifying which half of the people are already your side's followers, and encouraging/motivating them to show up and vote.

Except I think the model has very recently changed. In the past it used to be about “chasing the centre”, and as a result, parties tended not to stray too far from centrist policy positions, because when polled on actual policies, most people tend to be remarkably closely bunched.

However, recent events have proven that (short term) political success can be attained by pushing the edges. Now, instead of parties following the relatively centrist positions of the majority of people, they are actively pushing more extreme agendas, pulling people away from the centre (using various propaganda techniques), and locking large blocks of voters in behind positions quite distant and clearly distinct from those of their opponents. The success of this approach seems to be predicated on creating ambiguities, obfuscation and false dichotomies. I’d suggest that many fervent followers would be unable to correctly articulate actual policies of their parties vs repeating glib partisan mantras.

Or at least that’s how it seems to me.

> Except I think the model has very recently changed.

It hasn't, at least in the way you describe.

> In the past it used to be about “chasing the centre”

It wasn't, at least not anything like recently; that turnout determines elections and even unaffiliated voters are just as consistently partisan in how they vote as party loyalists has been well known by both political scientists and political campaigners for decades, and deeply integrated into political strategy; it's he reason behind both GOTV efforts and selective voter suppression, neither of which are new elements of the political playbook.

> Now, instead of parties following the relatively centrist positions of the majority of people

They don't do that because there is no such thing. Distribution of political opinion doesn't have a central peak.

> Distribution of political opinion doesn't have a central peak.

But I'm not talking about "political opinion". I'm talking about "common sense" (reflective of things that may lie at the core of policies devoid of partisan spin). For example, according to a recent poll [0], a significant majority of Americans support immigration. A visiting alien might think that a consensus policy position could be achieved based on a result like that. Clearly however, that's not the case in reality. Similarly for background checks on gun buyers [1], yet, like immigration, it seems that when couched in absolutist, us-vs-them rhetoric, bipartisan policy is totally out of reach.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/23/us/immigration-polls-dona... [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-guns-poll/over-90-per...

Aren't there countries with compulsory voting? Don't those countries still have politicians that campaign?

I should have said "in the USA".

It isn’t a long term equilibrium state. Eventually it’ll either die down, one side will be crushed, or there’ll be extensive violence that could end up in a civil war. See the European wars or religion or the Dutch Revolt. For a less violent result see pillarisation, where different religious or political groups have parallel institutions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillarisation

Munster's (Germany) Rebellion comes close? As far as a moment in history, I mean.