Moderates are an endangered species in the pews, but they aren’t completely extinct at the ballot box

Moderates are such an endangered species that even when you see one in the wild, they’re easy to miss.

Pick your favorite hot button topic of the day and you can likely summarize what the left and what the right think about the issue. Abortion, guns, gay marriage — it’s easy to determine which side is pro and which is anti. But where do the moderates fall? What do they believe?

Moderates are ideologically somewhere between liberals and conservatives. Individuals who identify as moderates have political identities. However, as a whole, they are hard to define and are declining in part because of this perpetual identity crisis.

The identities of the left and the right are intrinsically tied with their stances on specific issues. We could attempt to define each side with general terms to summarize overall political philosophies: Conservatives promote individual liberties and traditional social ideas, while liberals promote civil liberties and evolving social ideas. But most people would define liberalism and conservativism by describing each side’s stances on some of the most contentious political issues of the day.

The identity of moderates is not so easily tied to the group’s political viewpoints because there is so much variety. Political moderates in this country are most frequently defined by who they are not rather than who they are. In response to the identity question, moderates might look to liberals and conservatives and respond, “we’re not like them.” This sort of anti-identity offers little distinguishable information about the group.