The Realignment That Wasn’t
National Conservatives made a bet on a major political realignment following the election of Donald J. Trump to the presidency in 2016. The hope was that moderate Democrats might find appeal in a Republican Party that would pivot against liberal immigration policy, free markets, and defense of American interests abroad, advocating instead for closing the borders, introducing industrial policy, and expecting allies to rely less on our defense forces. That realignment has not surfaced. Why is that?
There are three reasons. The first is a misreading of voter analysis immediately after the 2016 presidential election, one that National Conservatives have refused to correct even after new data revealed a stable alignment within parties. The second is advancing an issue set that simply does not work for would-be Democratic voters or for conservatives outside the National Conservative milieu. The third reason is Trump himself, who has proved too divisive to be a bridge-builder between Democratic and Republican factions. This essay examines each of these problems in turn.
The Empty Quadrant Fallacy
In June of 2017, Lee Drutman published an article based on data from the Democracy Fund’s Voter Study Group detailing a key graphic for National Conservatives, one that illustrated the now famous “empty quadrant.” Drutman divides the American voting electorate into four quadrants. The X-axis shows the spectrum from economic liberalism to economic conservatism. The Y-axis shows the spectrum from social liberalism to social conservatism. Fully 44.6% of voters are found in the bottom left of the graph, meaning that they hold both economic and socially liberal views. Drutman calls these the “liberals,” and they vote for Democrats. The upper-right quadrant contains 22.7% of the voters, and these are Drutman’s “conservatives,” who vote for Republicans. The upper left of the graph contains 28.9% of voters, who are economically liberal but socially conservative. Drutman calls these the “populists,” and their votes are swing votes. The bottom right—those who are economically conservative and socially liberal—are what Drutman calls the “libertarians,” and they make up just 3.8% of voters. The joke among National Conservatives was to say all these people work for AEI.
