= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
fubarobfusco comments on A Voting Puzzle, Some Political Science, and a Nerd Failure Mode - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (180)
I'm not American, so I could be wrong about this. But at first glance it seems to me that Republicans have to run two vastly different campaigns, one in the primaries and the other in the general election, while Democrats could run pretty much the same campaign in the primaries as well as the general election. It seems to me that people like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz would have to get called flip-flops if they were to run for presidency in 2016 while Hillary Clinton would be able to run just one campaign.
Am I wrong, or is the Democratic party just larger than the Republican party and therefore more mainstream?
Generalizing over the whole nation, the higher the voter turnout, the better the Democrats do. This is part of why the two parties like to accuse each other of tolerating voter fraud or illegal voting (Republicans accuse Democrats of this) and of suppressing voter turnout through tricks such as voter caging and inconveniences such as short polling hours (Democrats accuse Republicans of this).
Equivalently, Republican affiliation is more common in sectors of the population that are more likely to vote — e.g. the retired elderly.