Since roughly the beginning of the year I have been loosely following the course of the U.S. presidential primaries and have noticed a trend towards candidates falling towards the extremes of the political spectrum as far as their stances on policy and governance. This is a strategic move in order to capture the vote of a given candidates party base to win the primary elections, and can be expected to reverse to an extent during the general elections where swing voters will likely be the target audience of rhetoric rather than those already deeply entrenched in the candidates own party. It has got me thinking though as to whether or not anyone has developed any sort of partisanship index in order to actually provide some sort of quantifiable measure of a given politician’s partisanship that could be used as a point of comparison between candidates. Continue reading →