Independents vs. Base: What Wins Presidential Elections?

One of the enduring debates among election analysts is whether it is better for a candidate to focus on turning out their base or appealing to moderates and voters in the center. In the 2024 election, both candidates attempted a mix of these strategies, but Donald Trump evidently did so more effectively.

In one of the final polls conducted by The Economist/YouGov before the presidential election, 37% of respondents said Kamala Harris was “very liberal,” while 18% described her as moderate. Comparatively, 28% said Trump was “very conservative,” and 13% said he was moderate. Among independents, the distinction was starker: 30% said Harris was “very liberal,” while only 18% said Trump was “very conservative.” 

By contrast, looking back at the 2020 election, an Economist/YouGov poll conducted Oct. 11-13, 2020, found that 30% of respondents believed Joe Biden was moderate, while only 13% thought Trump was moderate.

While the numbers are similar, more voters perceived Biden as moderate in 2020 than perceived Trump as moderate. Fewer people thought Trump was "very conservative" in 2024 than thought Harris was "very liberal." Similarly, in 2012, a Pew Research Center poll conducted Oct. 24-28 found that 50% of respondents believed Obama took more moderate positions, compared to 38% for Romney. In these three elections, the candidate who was perceived as more moderate and less extreme won the election.

However, in 2016, the reverse appeared to be true. A Pew Research Center poll from July 2016 asked voters which phrases applied to each candidate. For the term “extreme,” only 19% of respondents associated it with Clinton, compared to 55% who associated it with Trump. This gap may have narrowed over time as Trump became more familiar to voters as a politician through events such as the debates and the Republican National Convention, but the perception likely stuck through Election Day as Trump was perceived as the outsider with new ideas.

A poll from Third Way, a think tank supporting “center-left ideas,” found that the decisive factor in elections might not be the perceived radicalness of the candidates but whether the electorate leans Republican or Democratic based on the dominant issues of the campaign.

The poll conducted Nov. 7-10 with 1,600 respondents from battleground states asked voters to rate themselves and the candidates on a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 was “completely liberal” and 10 was “completely conservative.” On average, respondents rated Trump as a 7.8 and Harris as a 2.5. Despite both candidates being viewed as relatively extreme, respondents on average rated themselves as a 5.6, placing them about one point closer to Trump than to Harris.

Unfortunately, there is no definitive answer to the quandary of turning out the base vs. playing for the independent centrist voters. Polls suggest the more moderate candidate won in 2012, 2020, and 2024, but not in 2016.

However, this perception of moderation may reflect the electorate’s ideological center shifting slightly conservative or liberal in a given election. As a result, candidates may initially seem extreme if their positions are far from the average voters, but effective persuasion can make initially radical ideas and candidates appear more normalized over time.