There is, of course, but there aren’t many politicians – or voters for that matter – in that no-man’s land.

This polarization is a direct consequence of the way we vote, specifically Plurality voting, where each voter casts a vote for a single candidate out of a field of many, and the candidate with the most votes wins. The problem with this system is that two candidates who are seen as similar – that is they tend to appeal to the same set of voters – split the vote, creating a severe disadvantage if both are on the ballot. That is why parties form, and why they nominate a single candidate rather than allowing several of them to be on the ballot.

Over time, this tends to settle on two dominant, opposing parties. Anything other than two is not stable. This means that voters whose opinions most closely align with the position of one or the other dominant party have the most power, while those in the center don’t really get to have much of a say in elections. As time goes on, the voters themselves tend to become similarly polarized. Being in the middle becomes harder and harder.

So yes, there is a middle ground on almost everything. If we actually elected such middle ground candidates – those with more nuanced stances that approximated that of the median voter – we’d have a lot more effective government, in my opinion. We don’t have that – not because of human nature, not because of an intrinsic lack of a middle ground – but because our voting system is badly flawed.