The Centrist Dilemma

By: Arjun Sawhney

The political polarization in the USA seems never to have been greater. With the Democratic Party moving further left and the Republican Party moving right, centrists in both parties are in a dilemma. If you are a democrat but prioritize financial discipline, law & order, or if you are a socially liberal republican, how do you influence the direction of the country and make your voice heard and your vote matter? What if you believe in collaboration and compromise as the best path forward? 

In the last presidential election, thirty-one states had a voting margin between 10% and 30%. Of the thirty-one states, around half are meaningfully open primary and half are not (not specifically half due to definitional issues). Would it be better for a centrist democrat in Mississippi, an open-primary state, to vote for the more moderate republican in primaries or for a centrist republican in New York, essentially a closed-primary state, to switch parties to influence a more moderate democratic candidate? While the former is viable and one can be transparent and honest about it, the latter can raise ethical and identity concerns, as it can be seen as deceptive to access a process designed for actual party members. 

Pushing for more open-primary states - currently there are only around fifteen - where republicans and democrats alike can vote in their opposing primaries - would be a good reform from a centrist's perspective. Ranked-choice voting, where you rank your choices, and if no one gets more than fifty percent, the candidate with the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated, is also a potential reform. Ballots that had that candidate ranked first are redistributed to whoever those voters ranked second, and the process continues until you have a winner. This process has been used successfully in Australia for over a century. Another alternative would be to build cross-partisan organizations to influence moderation openly.

These are all sincere and honest strategies for centrists to pursue to not feel disenfranchised from their vote. However, the single biggest one continues to be greater participation and engagement in primaries and elections. Whether due to inconvenient timing, insufficient media coverage, or the perception that primaries don’t matter, typically, only 20%-30% of the voting population participates in presidential primaries and only 15%-20% in mid-term primaries. Local primaries can have a less than 5% turnout! While we don’t know how that breaks down for centrists, chances are there is a great deal of room for improvement.

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