On my last post, I tried to present data without adding any interpretations that could be considered partisan. Here, there are no such qualms. Please note, however, that my certainty for these interpretations is far from absolute. Those who are curious as to how I personally would read the data, press on!
Again, here is the breakout of philosophical self-identification by party self-identification. Read this from top to bottom, meaning for all self-identified Republicans, 3% say they are liberal, 22% say they are moderate, etc.
| Tot | Rep | Dem | Ind | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lib | 20% | 3% | 44% | 15% |
| Mod | 36% | 22% | 40% | 46% |
| Cons | 40% | 74% | 13% | 36% |
| DK/NA | 4% | 1% | 3% | 4% |
I noted in the last post how Republicans overwhelmingly call themselves conservative while Democrats are nearly as likely to call themselves moderate as liberal. I believe that this is a remnant of the Carter/Reagan years, when the liberal label was frequently used (to great effect) as a pejorative and the conservative label was used with pride; many Democrats abandoned the liberal label, and found political utility in “claiming the center” by calling their own views moderate. I also noted that Democrats are roughly 3 times as likely to call themselves conservative as Republicans are to call themselves liberal. This is also consistent with the above.
Second, here again is the breakout of party self-identification by philosophic self-identification.
| Tot | Lib | Mod | Con | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rep | 26% | 3% | 16% | 49% |
| Dem | 31% | 67% | 34% | 10% |
| Ind | 34% | 24% | 43% | 30% |
| Other | 7% | 5% | 5% | 8% |
| DK/NA | 2% | % | 2% | 3% |
While I do think that each of the potential reasons I offered in the last post (which was not intended to be an all-inclusive list) for these breakouts have some bit of truth to them, I think that a main reason so many self-identified conservatives are Democrats is stickiness to what they’ve always been. Conservatives, by nature, are slower to embrace change. I suspect that number, over time, will drop as the population ages, barring a sudden change (or evolution) by either or both of the main parties. I also believe that this cohort by-and-large does not think that the Republicans are too far to the right, but instead is too favorable to big business (which does not necessarily correspond to a left/right view of politics).
I would love to see a question on how respondents perceive each party (“too liberal”, “too conservative”, “neither too conservative nor too liberal” and then see the crosstabs there by political philosophy. I think that this would be illuminating towards a broad picture of how each party would best be served in terms of moving left or right in general.
But let’s look at the calculated approximate sizes of the cominations again:
| Philosophy/Party | Pct |
|---|---|
| Con/Rep | 19% |
| Mod/Ind | 16% |
| Lib/Dem | 14% |
| Mod/Dem | 12% |
| Con/Ind | 12% |
| Mod/Rep | 6% |
| Lib/Ind | 5% |
| Con/Other | 4% |
| Con/Dem | 4% |
| Mod/Other | 2% |
| Other/Ind | 2% |
| Other/Other | 1% |
| Other/Dem | 1% |
| Lib/Other | 1% |
| Lib/Rep | 1% |
| Other/Rep | 0% |
For giggles, let’s make some assumptions about the above:
- Con/Rep form the “base” of the GOP
- Lib/Dem form the “base” of the Democrats
- Some percentage of “Mod/Rep” and “Lib/Rep” will vote Democrat if the GOP moves too far to the right, and as such are “in play” but leaning Republican
- The same is true for “Con/Ind”
- Some percentage of “Con/Dem” will vote Republican if the Democratic Party moves too far to the left, and as such are “in play” but leaning Democratic
- Some percentage of “Mod/Dem” will vote Republican if the Democratic Party moves too far to the left, and as such are “in play” but strongly leaning Democratic (I realize I am not specifying a similar bucket on the GOP’s side; this is intentional and is due to the phenomenon of more Democrats calling themselves moderates and my suspicion that this is partly just due to an aversion to the liberal label rather than an indication of them being truly in play. In other words, a smaller percentage will jump ship)
- “Lib/Ind” and “Con/Dem” are likely Democratic votes, but more amenable to jumping ship
- The entire cohort that says their party is another (as opposed to not specifying) is not really in play
- Those that did not specify a party identification but did specify conservative will tend to vote Republican
- Those that did not specify a party identification but did specify liberal will tend to vote Democatic
- The balance is both in play, and just as likely to go either way
With these assumptions, we end up with something like this:
| Republican Base | 19% |
| More likely Republican than Democratic | 19% |
| More likely Democratic than Republican | 9% |
| Even more likely Democratic than Republican | 12% |
| Democratic Base | 14% |
| Neither | 8% |
| Truly up for grabs | 19% |
This feels about right, if we keep in mind that the survey was taken at a time when the Obamacare website rollout fiasco was hitting hardest, and is likely a bit heavy on the GOP side of things. However, if this is really how things shake out, it looks to me like the Democrats actually have room to move to the left. Either way, it looks to me as though there is more benefit for the GOP to move towards the center than for them to do the opposite. As a libertarian leaning conservative (or is it vice-versa), this does not make me particularly happy, but it does appear to me to be the stronger political move.
