What is an Overton window?

Inspiration

I’m late to the party with this, but over the last few years, I’ve been hearing about an “Overton window” shifting in politics.

My guess before digging in

Through context clues, I know it’s about perception or opinion of something shifting over time. I don’t know the scope, as in, can it affect a single person, or does it take a large enough sample to count?

Findings

• According to Overton window - Wikipedia, it’s the range of subjects and arguments politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time. It’s also known as the window of discourse
• Overton created a vertical chart of different political ideas that it’s possible to have with a straight line from “most government, least freedom” to “least government, most freedom” and said that the ideas that politicians can get away with supporting are in the middle of it but sometimes where that is changes. The chart was vertical to avoid confusion with the left and right political spectrum

Etymology

It’s named after the American policy analyst and former senior vice president at Mackinac Center for Public Policy, Joseph Overton, who proposed that the political viability of an idea depends mainly on whether it falls within an acceptability range, rather than on the individual preferences of politicians using the term or concept.