Re:Pseudonyms to protect authors of controversial articles
by phs318u on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @04:49PM
(#18445229)
> 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...
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.