Which hurts candidates for office more?

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

I've seen types of discussions like this before on here, but I'm curious.

[Dereich]

Well, if you can't win the base you can't win the primary. So base by default.

[tpfkaw]

Depends on the state, in Ohio the former, in New Hampshire the latter, for example.

[ShamDam]

To be honest I think the two are correlated more often than not. Inability to rally the base of a party (at least lately) is often much less about policy and more about flair and presentation. Obama was able to rally the base in one of the most effective ways he could, but didn't have to alienate independent voters to do it. Granted, there are also cases like McCain/Palin wherein the base is rallied but independent voters become alienated, but then again I believe that there was a boost in independent support for the McCain campaign until it fell apart soon after that choice. So I think in order to rally the base, one really only needs to campaign with style, as most party voters will end up voting for their party in most cases anyway, whereas in order to rally independent voters, one needs to campaign with style AND a little bit more substance. So by those standards, a lack of independent support happens more often.

[Vosem]

In two-party systems (particularly American politics, the most two-party system out there), it's more useful to appeal to independent voters. In a multi-party system if you're a dominant party you want to appeal to independents, but if you're a small party building up your base is more significant.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Depends on the race. For example, I will use my home district of FL-22. My "boss", Adam Hasner, will need to win over Independents in order to win. The Conservative base would much prefer West, but when they see Lois Frankel on the ballot, they will turn to Hasner with glee.

On the other hand, lets say Mike Bloomberg jumps into the Presidential race with Mark Warner as his running mate. They are the nominees of the Moderate Hero Party. Obama would have to worry about his base slipping away, rather than consolidating independents.

[Napoleon]

Inability to rally the base hurts candidates far more. But it depends at what level we are talking about.

[tpfkaw]

It's also worth noting that "exciting the base" means a lot more to Republicans than Democrats; the Democratic "base" is just urban minority machine politics (who would vote 90% for Yellow Dog (D) ), while the Republicans have an actual *ideological* "base" they have to motivate with red meat (the Democratic ideological base, such as it is, consists mainly of college students and yuppie 20-somethings, who are well-represented on the internet but not really in real life; unions act as a sort of ideological pseudo-base in that they control large blocs of zombie primary voters, but said voters are not typical high-information "base" ones).

So appealing to independents (essentially by throwing their base under the bus and appealing to white suburban 'soccer moms') is relatively more important to Democrats, while appealing to the base is relatively more important to Republicans.