Rick,

OK, now I see where the misunderstanding was, I shouldn’t have used “electorate”, I should have just said “people”.

The professor in this case was speaking very generally, basically saying that all people in a country will have political views that are spread out from one extreme to the other. It will look like a bell curve. I believe he said far right to far left to simplify, but I think it would be valid for any question, most people will take some middleground on most issues.

He described this by making an horisontal oval shape, showing less people in each end, and more people the closer you get to the middle.

Then he circled the left 3/4 and said that that’s the potential voters for one party, circled the right 3/4 and said it was the potential voters of the other.

This would illustrate that the 50% in the middle could turn either way, they agree with both parties, more or less.

This was done as a comparison to a european system, with multiple parties, where a far left party couldn’t claim more than maybe 10-20% of the voters. If they try to expand their “potential voters” by moving to the middle, a new far left party will pop up and grab the far left voters.

This usually leads to one “far left” party, one “far right” party, and 3-4 parties that fight for the middle, where the most people, and voters, are.

A “winner takes all” system as the US tends to favor 2 parties, that has a wider “voter potential”, than a scandinavian type system, that tends to generate 4-7 parties in the parliament, each of them with a smaller “voter potential”.

(5% of all votes gets seats in parliament, and if they make the party program too wide, people will choose a party that targets their own opinions more precisely.)

It wasn’t said as a political statement, it was more as an illustration of how politics work, and what the difference between european multiparty systems and the US system is. It made sense to me then, and it still makes sense.

Of course, it’s a generalized illustration, and not an absolute fact.

The class was “Western European politics”, but I learned lots about the US system in it, since the US was used as comparison. And I sat next to a guy that was interested in history and politics… Extremely interesting, and fascinating.

That would mean that in the case of USA, the “base” that is talked about is basically the area outside the other partys “voter potential”, for lack of a better word. That’s the voters that are very unlikely to vote for the other party, no matter what.

The rest of the voters will be inside both parties “voter potential”, they would agree more or less with both agendas, and could turn either way.

In the primaries, most of the voters will be the ones that are in the base, since they are the registered voters. That’s why candidates try to move to the ends, so they can get as much of the base as possible. Once they get the nomination, they cant stay there, because that puts them outside the “shared middle”, so they need to move to the center, but without alienating their own base. The further to the end they have to move, the longer it will be back to the center…

This spring, there was lots of discussions on that topic, Bush dont need to fight for the nomination, so he didn’t have to do that, while the Democrats saw themselfes have to go further and further to the left to find their base…

The reason I brought this up was that I dont think that it’s a solid 45% on each side, it sounds more sensible with maybe 20-30% on each side. (roughly 1/4 “voter potential” each).

If it was any more than that, it would basically mean that there isn’t any middle among americans in general anymore, and the curve over all peoples opinions would basically look like a twin peak rather than a bell curve. (The “solid” voters can not be close to center.)

Someone here talked about knowledge of polls and voting patterns, so I thought I should bring this up. It would actually be interesting to know what the “voter potential” looks like, if it really is so polarised that only 10% is “in play”, and the other 90% are allready committed to a candidate.

Polls usually just ask either-or questions, and they dont really tell just how solid the commitment to that vote is, which is what I was wondering about.

Thanks again for the Pew institute link, it’ll be a great resource.