The Median Voter

About

The Median Voter refers to a voter who sits toward the center of any given country's political spectrum, aka the most centrist or "typical" voter in a society. This idea is based on the "median voter theorem," which posits that voters on either end of the political spectrum will gravitate toward a candidate closest to their ideological viewpoints, which in turn motivates political candidates to gravitate toward centrist policies in a bid to gather the most votes from either end of the political spectrum. In American meme culture, the "median voter" is typically represented as an incoherent and often misinformed voter whose ideological opinions are hard to pin down through conventional political analysis. Some examples of memes include jokes about how the American "median voter" sometimes counters extremist rhetoric with myopic anecdotal evidence, for instance, does not buy into anti-trans rhetoric due to personal positive experiences with transgender people. Other median voter memes discuss former President Donald Trump's favorability seemingly tanking after two assassination attempts, with people joking about how the "median voter" inexplicably condones political violence.

Origin

The median voter theorem was devised by Scottish economist Duncan Black, which states that if voters and candidates are distributed along a one-dimensional spectrum where voters have single-peaked preferences (i.e. they react negatively to policies that not only underachieve their preferences but also overshoot them), voters are likely to gravitate toward the candidate closest to their preference. This motivates political candidates to pick the most centrist policies in a bid to garner votes from either end of the political spectrum.^[1]

In American meme culture, the median voter is portrayed as an ideologically incoherent voter who stands for inherently contradictory policies. Jokes about such a median voter gained traction online, especially in the early 2020s, given Donald Trump's heightened and polarizing political rhetoric during the 2020 and 2024 election cycles.

American statistician and FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver made some early notable posts on Twitter^[2] / X about the American "median voter" in 2019, writing that he "still sorta believes in the median voter theorem and thinks moderation probably wins more elections in the long run than playing to the respective party bases."

However, the earliest notable meme about the median voter was posted to Reddit's^[3] /r/neoliberal on October 8th, 2020, by Redditor /u/dan7315, where it gathered 2,000 upvotes in three years.

Spread

By 2022, jokes about the American "median voter" began to lean into the narrative that they are ideologically incoherent and likely to support contradictory policies largely based on anecdotal experience.

On August 11th, 2022, X^[5] user @michigeese posted an excerpt from a Washington Post article that showed a self-professed "pro-life" Republican Michigan voter standing behind the idea of abortion as a constitutional right. The caption on the post read, "Median voter," gathering over 3,000 likes in two years.

On December 30th, 2022, X^[4] user @ettingermentum posted a Twitter interaction between Libs of TikTok creator Chaya Raichik and an anonymous Twitter user, captioning the post "right wing ops vs the median voter." The post gathered over 30,000 likes in two years.

On March 10th, 2023, X^[7] user @ZackaryTweets posted a screenshot of a YouTube comment advocating for all bathrooms to be turned into single rooms with doors to solve the Transgender Bathroom Debate, gathering over 90,000 likes on a post captioned, "Shit like this is why I love the median voter."

On August 1st, 2024, X^[6] account @SocDoneLeft posted a crude meme showing Trump's approval rating going down after the first assassination attempt against him in July 2024 led to his approval rating going down. The post gathered over 3,000 likes in two months.

Search Interest

External References