Ideologically Extreme Candidates in U.S. Presidential Elections, 1948–2012

Marty Cohen, Mary C. McGrath, Peter Aronow and John Zaller

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2016, vol. 667, issue 1, 126-142

Abstract: Scholars routinely cite the landslide defeats of Barry Goldwater and George McGovern as evidence that American electorates punish extremism in presidential politics. Yet systematic evidence for this view is thin. In this article we use postwar election outcomes to assess the electoral effects of extremism. In testing ten models over the seventeen elections, we find scant evidence of extremism penalties that were either substantively large or close to statistical significance.

Keywords: extremism; ideology; presidential elections; political economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:anname:v:667:y:2016:i:1:p:126-142

DOI: 10.1177/0002716216660571

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