The candidates all appear to either be right-wing, centrist, or barely pushing center-left, in this person's opinion. Why are there no extreme left-wing candidates?
TL;DRHaddock says they didn't think in left/right terms and just built a lineup around five topics, while Weissbaum adds that many traditionally left policies are already law in the UEE.
Weirdly enough, for me at least, when we were looking at these, I wasn't sort of thinking of doing one-to-one analogs of, oh, this person's right-wing or left-wing or central. I don't really care. Once we came up with the five topics of Synthworld, the Vanduul, the economy, xeno relations, stuff like that, it was just filling out a chart of who's going to be for what and who's against them, that kind of thing. So as a lineup it made sense, and then give them that sort of sprinkling... But that's just me.
I mean, there's also a lot of traditionally left, quote unquote, policies that are already law within the UEE: the idea of universal health care, universal education, universal housing. So the empire on a whole has these backbones, which maybe is why they didn't come up so much in this election, versus the people who are voicing objections to it because of the status quo. So it is one thing to consider, the current position of the UEE and how these candidates are reacting to it.