Knucklehead,

when I studied in the US, my Political studies professor made a political map of the US. As he explained it, the Republicans and Democrats are “catch-all parties”, and each have roughly about 1/4 of the electorate “locked in” to their agenda, and those are unlikely to vote for the other side. The struggle is for the 50% in the middle, that share values and agenda with both parties. They can turn either way, and the winning politician is the one that catch the most of that middleground. (bell-curve?)

I know this is simplistic (it was told in passing as a comparison for Western European politics) but I have noticed it’s not a bad example.

I think it is also valid in Europe, leftwing and/or rightwing parties are unlikely to get more than 5-15% of the vote, there simply aren’t any more voters available for them, even if they try to move towards the middle. And the middleground in a multiparty system is occupied by other parties, so they cant be “catch-all” parties without loosing their base to a another party.

The reason I bring this up is that I’m not sure that there is a solid 40-45% for each party, I think that sounds way too much, 20-30% sounds more likely to me, the rest is probably in play based on where they stand on different issues, but each side has (so far) locked in about 20% of those.

I might be way off here, and I would really like it if someone could give me feedback on this, and tell me where I got this wrong.