Who is the "Average" Democrat or Republican

[Akno21]

There is all this talk about moderates and conservatives and liberals, but who is the average Democrat, or average Republican, who has been elected statewide? If we can establish one, it would help for hypothetical situations, to match up a fringe candidate against the "normal" guy.

Maybe Sen. Ron Wyden for the Democrats

[Person Man]

This actually an interesting post. Demographically, what would the typical dem, typical lib, typical centrist, typical indy, the median voter, the typical conservative and the typical republican look like>

[Eraserhead]

I am the new face of the Democratic Party. I am the water that washed away the old country. I am Eraserhead.

[Ban my account ffs!]

I think my state rep is a typical Democrat from my area:

He supports gun rights, hunts, and is generally an avid outdoorsman (he hunts, fishes, and camps/hikes and leads youth organizations on wilderness excursions)

He is a vocal supporter of renewable energy and good environmental stewardship.

He supports fair, progressive taxes:  He opposed the "health impact 'fee'" on cigarettes as he believed it was an unfair tax on the poor, who tend to smoke more, supports measures to reduce property taxes by providing subsidies to local governments funded through income tax revenues.

He supports strong education funding and socialized medicine.

He supports incentives and low taxes for small businesses for two reasons:

1)  To encourage entrepreneurship in rural Minnesota by making it easier for people with a serious desire to start a business to do so.

2)  To keep small businesses which do not seek to grow that serve rural areas in business.  He realize the vital importance of many small businesses that remain small but offer vital services to communities that might not otherwise have them.

My old state rep. was a typical Republican from the area:

He supported strong education funding from pre-k- college.
He opposed tax increases.
Was a social conservative.
Believed in private health care, but strong funding for programs that bring aid to the disabled, children, and the working poor.

Was a moderate on environmental issues, favoring business slightly over conservation/protection... but understood that a balance must be achieved to protect both business and the environment from long term damage.

Overall, he was a good representative and a Republican most anyone could like... but his conservative stance on social issues along with the skyrocketing tuition and property taxes thanks to the "no new taxes" policy got him booted out of office.

[memphis]

You can't average people. Voters are not mathematical figures. The parties are, by their nature, coalitions of interest groups. There's no way to average a poor ghetto black person with a union member with an idealistic college kid to make an average Democrat. Similarly, you can't average a rural evangelical with a business minded country clubber with pro-war veteran to make an average Republican.

[Ban my account ffs!]

You can't average people. Voters are not mathematical figures. The parties are, by their nature, coalitions of interest groups. There's no way to average a poor ghetto black person with a union member with an idealistic college kid to make an average Democrat. Similarly, you can't average a rural evangelical with a business minded country clubber with pro-war veteran to make an average Republican.

You can average anything out.  You can mix the positions of all these people and come out with an "average" democrat or republican.  Now whether that is a typical democrat or republican is a different question.. which in that case, for a typical voter of a certain party, you would take the position that agrees with the most people in the party, issue by issue... which is like finding the median... which is probably better and more accurate.. in teh same way that using median income is a more accurate picture of what a typical person earns in income as compared to the mean which gives weight to Mr. and Mrs. Hooty tooty up top earning 1000 times more than you and skewing the statistics.

[Person Man]

Yeah. What are "typical" voters/partisans like?