Etch-a-Sketching: Evaluating the Post-Primary Rhetorical Moderation Hypothesis

Abstract

Candidates have incentives to present themselves as strong partisans in primary elections, and then move “toward the center” upon advancing to the general election. Yet, candidates also face incentives not to flip-flop on their policy positions. These competing incentives suggest that candidates might use rhetoric to seem more partisan in the primary and more moderate in the general, even if their policy positions remain fixed. We test this idea by measuring ideological moderation in presidential campaign language. Using a supervised two-stage text analysis model, we find evidence that presidential candidates in 2008 and 2012 use more ideologically extreme language during primary campaigns, and then moderate their tone when shifting to the general election, with troubling implications for representation and accountability.