Everywhere order – everywhere we have looked, we have seen order. We have seen a public opinion that responds smoothly and predictably to public events. And what is predictable also is appropriate. Notwithstanding powerful evidence of individual ignorance and inattention, collective public opinion is everywhere orderly. We saw it in opinion response to events in Chapter 2, in alignments with parties over time in Chapter 3, in the daily fluctuations of the horse race polls in Chapter 4, and in response to government and politicians in Chapter 5. Everywhere order.

And yet we know that most Americans know and care little about government. I believe that evidence of ignorance and inattention; I have gathered some of it myself. How can we square the massive evidence of ignorance and unconcern about politics in the American public with the order we have repeatedly seen in the last five chapters?

The evidence is, after all, real. Most Americans do not know much about public affairs and report – with no apparent embarrassment – that they also don't care a great deal. And the evidence of the orderly aggregate is real. How then can we make sense of the two jointly? How do we get out of this dilemma?

The beginning point is understanding that politics happens at the margin. Great movements to left or right, Democrat or Republican, approve or disapprove, are produced by the systematic change of a quite small number of people. Our politics have not the flavor of the evangelist's tent, where great numbers repent their past and change. We do not throw off commitments to party or ideology lightly or en masse. Instead what counts as political change, even dramatic political change, is produced by quite small numbers of people moving systematically.

Note some parallelism to the aggregation gain argument of Chapter 1. Aggregation gain is a principle of mathematics; it has nothing to do with politics. This is now a more substantive point about politics, that the range of possibilities is mainly small-scale shifts around the middle. In other aspects of life, one can imagine large-scale changes back and forth over time. In American politics outcomes are held near the middle. Our winner-take-all structure of power makes it seem that our politics veer back and forth on wild swings. And that is true of the consequences of party control.