It’s a question that political scientists and political consultants like to debate. As most political scientists can tell you, more than 90 percent of people who declared a party allegiance voted for the presidential nominee from their party in 2012. But there’s some evidence that consultants are right, too: While most people stick with their party, who gets the nod can sometimes significantly affect a party’s share of the vote, and in close elections can even affect the outcome.
Here’s the question I want to ask: how much does a specific candidate bring to the table for their own party?
The power in this survey design comes from holding everything about the election constant except the choices on the ballot. The economy is the same; the incumbent party has the same level of performance; and foreign imbroglios exist and do not change as we altered the set of candidates to voters. Think of the approach as if it were an episode of “Dr. Who” or “Star Trek,” in which we get to go to a parallel universe and run the last presidential election with the same voters and the same national context, but with different candidates. If there are differences in vote share, we can be fairly sure they are due to the switching of the candidates.
And there’s one assumption not mentioned: that the voter will vote. Perhaps the survey permitted the voter to not vote, but even so, I would submit that there’s a difference between answering a survey – written or verbal – and standing in the voting box and shaking your head over the choices. When someone is talking to you, most folks will want to take a stand and say they’d vote, but get them by themselves and they’ll just drink the faux Pepto-Bismol and leave that box blank.
So the conclusion of this column, that some voters will switch depending on the candidate, while undoubtedly true, especially since some of us are political independents (another unmentioned facet), misses a more important factor – the party voters so disappointed in their candidate that they stay home. The study is unable to answer the question, How much does the general GOP and/or conservative voter find, for example, Rich Santorum, or Michelle Bachmann, so unpalatable that they’d rather go bowling than vote?
That’s a more interesting survey result. By measuring the more extreme candidates of both parties, we get a measure of how extreme each party may really be. This is important in an era where party zealots – those most likely to be extreme – control the parties.
