Or so one could conclude from this column at the Washington Post by Alan Abramowitz and Bill Bishop. The two men report that the “Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) surveyed more than 24,000 Americans who voted in 2006″ - 46% of the ones polled said they voted for the Republican Party, 54% said to have voted for the Democrats.

They go on to write that the the U.S. is split: on just about every issue the (far) majority of those who voted for the Democrats chose the most ‘liberal’ (left) option, while the far majority of those who voted for the Republicans consistently favored the most (/ more) conservative option(s).

Examples:
- 85% of those who voted for a Democrat believe that the war in Iraq has been mistake, while only 18% of the Republican voters shares that view.
- 69 percent of Democratic voters chose the most strongly pro-choice position on the issue of abortion, compared with 20 percent of Republican voters”
- “only 16 percent of Democratic voters supported a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, while 80 percent of Republican voters did”
- “91 percent of Democratic voters favored governmental action to reduce global warming, compared with 27 percent of Republican voters”

Also: “When we combined voters’ answers to the 14 issue questions to form a liberal-conservative scale (answers were divided into five equivalent categories based on overall liberalism vs. conservatism), 86 percent of Democratic voters were on the liberal side of the scale while 80 percent of Republican voters were on the conservative side. Only 10 percent of all voters were in the center. The visual representation of the nation’s voters isn’t a nicely shaped bell, with most voters in the moderate middle. It’s a sharp V.”

Their conclusion: Washington is divided because the American people is divided.

Streiff at Red State concludes that moderates are irrelevant. They’re such a small group in American politics that they simply don’t matter.

But what about the election results in 2006? Didn’t polls indicate that one of the major reasons for the Democratic victory was that many Independents, Centrists and / or Moderates voted Democrat during those elections?

In other words, perhaps the majority of Americans is not ‘moderate’ but moderates are politically important. Or not?

Streiff agrees:

Ten percent. While admittedly ten percent can cost an election

Exactly.

He goes on to write:

one has to consider how much effort one needs to spend sucking up to the squishy center and what the cost will be on turnout to the 45% who agree with you on most issues regardless of how they self-identify.

That’s a fair question of course: should politicians work so hard at gaining the support of the Center?

However, Streiff, in the end concludes:

I submit the “moderate” electorate is a toothless political tiger.

Huh?

Wait.

They can cost you the elections.

They’re a paper tiger.

What is it? It’s either one of those two. It cannot be both. Paper tiger implies that they don’t have any influence. The fact that they may cast the deciding vote, however, implies quite the opposite: a small yet influential group.

Also read CorrenteWire on this.

UPDATE
Paul Silver wrote a must read post for The Moderate Voice about this very column. His last line:

The “middle” is more about the commitment to collaboration - not about where we start.

I agree and that’s why I consider the ‘middle’ to be larger than the poll indicates. The question they should have added is “are you willing to work with the other side and thus to compromize on this issue?”