The following story hit on a point we will concentrate on more fully as we begin to discuss elections soon. In order to win primary elections, candidates have to earn the votes of party identifiers - which means they have to take relatively extreme ideological positions. But these positions can make them uncompetitive in the general election, where more moderate and independent voters are likely to turn out. So candidates have to moderate their tone accordingly if they want to win, but this might make them unpopular to the party base.
Its a delicate dance, the story points out that it is increasingly common in Texas elections:
In the primaries, Republican candidates in particular answer to their party’s purists and, in the general election, to everybody who votes.
The state’s political maps put most candidates in safe zones, where Republicans do not have to worry about moderate or liberal voters, and Democrats do not have to worry about moderates and conservatives. The rest have to get out of their primaries without committing to anything that will endanger them in November.
They have to walk a line, sticking with conservative colleagues on legislative votes, but doing it without imperiling their re-elections.
Members of Congress are familiar with that terrain, but on the scale that has partisanship on one end and local issues on the other, Texas legislative races used to skew toward the local.
