No Runny Eggs

After a quick look at the ’08 and ’04 exit polls, I wrote that one of the things we learned from the ’08 election was:

Working from your base to the middle works better than working from the middle towards your base – Obama received support from 89% of self ascribed "liberals", compared to Kerry getting 85% of the same group.   McCain only received 78% of the "conservative" vote while Bush received 84% of the same group.   Of course those who are moderates broke for Obama 60% to 39%.   It’s clear from this that while Obama held his base, McCain never fully recovered from his early pokes in the conservative eyes.

After looking over some past exit polls, I don’t think that statement quite covers it.

In this election we had arguably, the most liberal candidate ever fielded by the Democrats run against one of, if not the, most moderate Republican (OK, we can argue about Ford, maybe even GHW Bush.)   Additionally, while the moderate tried to cloak himself with conservatism, the liberal made no such attempt and ran a campaign that was unashamedly left.

The notion of running a Moderate for the Republican candidate was cobbled from a series of theories.  

First, the Republican brand had been decimated through the combination of President Bush’s disappearing approval ratings and the electorates mistaken notion that the Democrats didn’t have a hand in the existing economic mess.  

Second, the Republican leadership is at best, moderate.   They believe they reflect their party and the broader electorate.   Remember the guffawing from Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy  when, caught via a “hot mike”  were heard ridiculing the choice of Sarah Palin because her choice by McCain was “cynical.”   Their point was that no one in the Republican party (read that leadership) believes what Palin believes.   Party Leaders, moderate and believing to be reflective of the electorate, they wanted one of their own.

Finally, there was a belief that a moderate would be able to gain votes from a broader electorate spectrum.   After all, where else could the conservatives go, the liberals were obviously going for the Dems so the fight was going to be for moderates.   The candidate who gained a bigger share of support from the moderates would surely win this election.

So with all that rationale for running a moderate, how did it work out?

Not well!

Yes, McCain loss but that’s not the take away from this election.   How he lost is the lesson.

I took a look at the exit polls for the last 32 years.   They started with Jimmy Carter beating Gerald Ford and went through the most recent election. I noticed a few things that debunks the “we win with moderates” thinking.

First, there are some who believe that we have become an electorate that is at least more moderate if not sliding to the liberal side. While there is some movement from year to year, you’ll notice that for the most part, the electorate, at least as they describe themselves, looks pretty much today as it did in 1976. In 1976, the electorate was 20%, 48% and 31% Liberal, Moderate and Conservative respectively. In 2008 the same split was 22%, 44% and 34%. If anything, the moderates have become slightly smaller as the electorate becomes a bit more polarized.

Second, note that with the exception of Reagan’s first term against Carter, no Republican has won without getting at least 80% of the Conservative vote. Reagan’s shortage of Conservative support can be attributed to some being split off to Anderson along with the fact that the election of that year had the smallest percentage of the electorate describing themselves as Conservative.   At any rate, it seems pretty clear that if a Republican doesn’t hold 80% of thieir base, they have little if any chance to win the election.   Interestingly, the same parallel does not hold for Democrats.   Democrats can win with less than 80% of the liberal vote, note Carter and Clinton’s first runs.   Only in Clinton’s second run, and now Barack Obama, have liberals supported the Democrat candidate with greater than 80%.

Finally, let’s look at those moderates.   Note that since 1976, Only Reagan’s landslide victory of 1984 garnered greater than 50% of the moderate support for Republicans.   Of course, Reagan also achieved a modern high of 29% amongst liberals.   Other than that instance, no Republican has gained greater than 50% of the moderate’s support.   More typical has been the Bush victories where mid 40% of the moderates supported the Republican.

OK, so some moderate support is required to win.   Was McCain’s strategy of courting moderates successful?   Obviously based on the end results, no.   However, I believe more than “No” we can say “Hell, no!”   Note that Obama has been the only candidate in modern times to gain 60% of the moderate support…and as I mentioned early in this post, he ran as an unashamed liberal!   It’s obvious that for his efforts, McCain made no inroads of import to the moderate electorate.

It’s clear that McCain’s desire to court the moderates failed.   In fact, his focus on the moderates cost him his base and doomed his election