Moderates

Moderates are often overlooked in contemporary research on American voters. Many scholars who have examined moderates argue that these individuals only classified as such due to a lack of political sophistication or conflicted views across issues. We develop method distinguish three ways an individual might be moderate: having genuinely moderate issues, being inattentive politics surveys, holding poorly summarized by single liberal–conservative dimension. find ideological dimension accurately describes most, but not all, Americans’ policy views. Using the classifications from our model, we demonstrate and those whose well explained especially consequential for electoral selection accountability. These results suggest need renewed attention middle spectrum.