Election 2012 and the Profile of a Swing Voter
While it is always important to rally the party base, the
unaffiliated voters that make up around 15% of the electorate typically decide
elections. Now that Mitt Romney
has solidified his spot as the GOP candidate, we will undoubtedly see his
stance on the issues move toward the center in order to sway these voters. But which issues matter to unaffiliated
voters, and how will both parties frame them?
A recent article by Bill Keller in the New York Times
addresses these topics and puts forth a profile of swing voters referenced from
Third Way, a Clintonian think tank.
The first three points in the article about these voters are
particularly noteworthy: They tend
to be fiscal conservatives worried about deficits and debt, they tend to be
free marketers but expect governmental help in physical and intellectual
infrastructure, and they don’t oppose tax increases.
Since I am particularly interested in the whole deficit/debt
problem that is facing our country, I would like to discuss how politically
feasible the Simpson-Bowles plan is for either party. As we discussed with Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, the
plan seems to be a middle ground solution to out fiscal woes combining various
cuts with tax increases. If swing
voters are so concerned about the deficits and debt, don’t mind tax increases,
and a middle ground solution has already been proposed, then why doesn’t either
party try to claim it for its own?
Will it alienate either base so much that it will discourage voting in
the upcoming election? Or is it a
result of political posturing where neither side wants to compromise (liberals
with cuts and conservatives with tax increases)?
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