With the presidential race on everyone’s mind, especially those of us who are finally old enough to vote for the first time, I’ve started to wonder about why the U.S. political field seems to have become so polarized.

It seems that there are rarely moderate candidates who get very far in higher office, particularly in political races, because they are said to not attract enough support from either party.

But why don’t moderate candidates attract support when, to both parties, they should theoretically be viewed as better than radicals on either side?

This summer, I was a field representative for the senate campaign of Sen. Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire. She is an example of a senator who is deemed by many to be a moderate.

For my job, I basically knocked on doors all day long across the New Hampshire seacoast area, talking to voters and collecting data.

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Something that really struck me during this experience, despite an awful amount of people answering their doors in their underwear, was that it seemed like there was always someone who wasn’t happy with what Ayotte was doing in Congress and in New Hampshire.

Let me start by saying that Kelly Ayotte is the seventh most bipartisan senator in the United States (according to a bipartisanship study by Georgetown University), and she often reaches across the aisle to move legislation forward.

In fact, this summer she worked with the other senator from New Hampshire, Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, on numerous occasions.

Ayotte also said she will not be voting for Donald Trump.