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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (25441)	7/29/2006 2:28:34 AM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541373

You could also take two coalitions or groups (like Democrats and Republicans) and assign the center to be somewhere in between them. Start with that group between them then try to isolate their attitudes on a number of issues to get a portrait what that swing voter is thinking right now. I work on the assumption that most issues have a dedicated 30% right and 30% left constituency; so the breakdown of the remaining 40% is usually a good guide to the general direction the center is taking. Hence my view that a 60% poll result or election result will reflect the 30% that tend to support the candidate or issue, and most of the undecideds in the middle. Of course, that number could include disaffected voters from the "natural constituency" as we see with Bush losing support on the right. The most precise indicator was the tracking poll I published regarding whether people thought Bush was too far right or not. A growing trend in that number tells me the center became disaffected from him the last three years. With his two presidential victories with 51% or less of the electorate, Bush never had a firm grip on the center anyway, despite the empty rhetoric about political capital.