My belief is that it’s primarily the voting system that causes this. (Not the electoral college; rather the whole ‘first past the post’ style of voting.) We see scissors presidents because that’s the winning strategy.
I suspect that other more sophisticated voting systems (even just ranked choice!) would do better. No voting system is perfect, but ‘first past the post’ is particularly pathological.
The voting theory jargon is that there is a center squeeze when you use first-past-the-post with primaries. Ranked choice has the same problem, but to a lesser degree.
My belief is that it’s primarily the voting system that causes this. (Not the electoral college; rather the whole ‘first past the post’ style of voting.) We see scissors presidents because that’s the winning strategy.
I suspect that other more sophisticated voting systems (even just ranked choice!) would do better. No voting system is perfect, but ‘first past the post’ is particularly pathological.
The voting theory jargon is that there is a center squeeze when you use first-past-the-post with primaries. Ranked choice has the same problem, but to a lesser degree.