Center-Right Hype vs. Center-Left Data

As the country went to the polls this past fall, the meme that America is a "center-right" country surged. Between the last week of October and the first week of November, the number of times that phrase appeared in the print and broadcast outlets tracked by Nexis grew an astonishing 168%.

While Republicans used those words' sudden currency to clamp a ceiling on the meaning of Obama's victory, Democrats fought back with myth-busting poll results about the political parties that Americans identify with, and about peoples' positions on campaign issues.

I have some data to add to that debate, and it drives a final stake into the center-right talking-point.

In August 2008, instead of asking people what party they're for, or which candidate's positions they agreed with, we - the Norman Lear Center and Zogby International - asked a scientific sample of adults to look at 21 pairs of statements. Each pair dug down to core political values. Each pair had a red (or conservative) answer and a blue (or liberal) answer.

What did we find out?

On some issues, the country has a lopsidedly blue point of view. For example, 77% of our respondents agreed that "it is our duty to help the less fortunate"; 76% said that "government is too involved in regulating morality"; 76% believe that "corporations generally act without society's best interests in mind."

On other issues, red answers were in the majority. Seventy-three percent believe that "freedom is more important than equality"; 69% said that "government generally creates more problems than it solves"; 67% agree that "evolution should be just one part of the science curriculum in the schools."

Here's what we learned when we calculated the average number of respondents who supported the blue position, and the average number supporting the red position: Fifty-two percent were blue, and 48% were red - a finding that's significant beyond the poll's +/- 1.8% margin of error. The country leans to the left, not the right.

(If you'd like to see all 21 pairs of political values questions, and how people answered, here's where to find that.)

A surprisingly small number of the 3,167 people in the survey gave answers that were all blue or all red. Instead, almost all the adults polled offered mixtures of red and blue answers. And when we analyzed those mixtures, we found that they formed three statistically significant clusters, which we called red (41% of the sample), blue (34%), and purple (24%). (The poll's findings omit the country's 5% of self-identified libertarians, who are all over the map on the issues.)

Purples - the nation's center - leaned to the red end of the spectrum on eight issues, and they leaned to the blue end of the spectrum on 12 issues. (They were split 50/50 on one issue: whether religion should be left out of public life.) Over all, 56% of the purples identified with blue answers, and 44% of the purples identified with red answers. In other words, the center of the country leans to the left, not the right.

What's more, reds didn't always endorse the red position, and blues didn't always pick the blue position. There were four instances where the majority of reds endorsed the blue position (including the 55% of reds who said that "foreigners immigrate to America for the chance to work for a better life"), and only one instance where blues endorsed a red position (52% agreed that "freedom is more important than equality").

The country leans to the left. The center leans to the left. Center-right is losers' wishful thinking; center-left is where the country says it stands.

Follow Marty Kaplan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/martykaplan

Comments

[Sioen]

Thank you so much for the data. This confirms what we already have seen in other data -- surveys on specific issues, and elections of specific candidates.

The sad part is, the losers in this case don't much value evidence. They cling to the idea that what they THINK is so, is so.

But at least the rest of know the truth.

[proud-elitist]

I like this post a lot. Keep chipping away at the mythology that is too often immediately swallowed and regurgitated as accepted conventional wisdom by the MSM. Although some say it doesn't matter, I believe we have to fight for the correct use of terms as much as we can. The cons have for too long manipulated the vocabulary so that many who are out-and-out liberals prefer to call themselves progressives or even social/fiscal conservatives. (I like the term "progressive," but "liberal" has such an honorable history that it is a shame we've often pushed it aside. We have to reclaim the language. We have to tell the cons that they are exactly that--cons. The middle way is often (not always) a coward's way out.

[Montanagramma]

For the question "is freedom more important than equality" my understanding is that the right equate freedom with "free market" rather than personal freedom. If others who answered the poll believed it meant social 'freedom" their answer could be different than those who believed it meant "free market" is more important than equality. If the respondants on the right do believe more "free market" i.e. less regulation, and the left could be meaning social "freedom", the answers could be a matter of perspective, thus a skewed result.

[richchaplin]

Yeah, that IS a poorly worded question.

It could be "free-markets vs. economic equality (communism)" which, obviously, would not poll well.

It could be "lack of incarceration vs. lack of racial/gender discrimination" -- i think most people would take the former (while some would go to jail for their rights, most would not).

Or it could be "anarchy (freedom from law) vs. justice (equality under the law)" which most, I think, would find themselves in the latter camp.

So since the question is bad, the data should be excised and the country leans even FURTHER left.

[Coinyer101]

"The middle way is no way at all. If we finally fail in this great and glorious contest, it will be by bewildering ourselves in groping for the middle way." -John Adams, 1776

from bob cesca's blog

[LDnearthesea]

I would have to say that there's other polls taken that have shown that when asked questions like should there be single-payer health care, or progressive income taxes, people tend to think there should be. Now if that makes the majority of Americans actually liberal leaning, so be it. It's the corporatist press that doesn't like this idea, so they spread the idea that most Americans lean toward being right-wing, as it serves them to. If right-wing means that you want the current private health care insurance system to stay in place, or that certain people don't deserve the same rights as anyone else, or that torture is okay, and there are certainly those amongst us that believe that, and unfortunately there are those in the corporate media that do all they can to encourage that sort of thinking, and there's rarely a real debate on news shows where in an even-handed fashion issues are discussed. What commonly occurs is some talking head who makes in the low millions per years saying something like we can't have socialized medicine here because it just won't work, and it works in Europe only because they have homogeneous societies, or some such crap like that that isn't true, like William Kristol or Britt Hume, or Sean Hannity. You will never see Bill Moyers, Howard Zinn or Noam Chomsky on CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, or FOX, an I don't think Amy Goodman's been on for quite some time.

[Auldphart]

Why is this so bloody important to some people?

Who gives a tinker's damn what the talking heads are saying?

If the morons of the right (sorry for the redundancy) need to believe that this country is "center-right" in order to sleep nights without the massive intake of soporific drugs, who cares?

Is this kind of stupidity even worth arguing about?

Auldphart

[bill]

And, also, alas, maybe those leaning blue are not necessarily the best at mathematics? If the clusters are Red = 41%, Blue = 34% and Purple = 24%, and Purple divides out as Blue-ish = 56% of purple ( or 13.4% over all) + Red-ish = 44% of purple ( or 10.6% over all); then:

Red-ish = 41% + 10.6% = 51.6 %
Blue-ish = 34% + 13.4% = 47.4 %

Still an uphill fight !
But, let's get our math right !

[TheyAllSuck]

I find it pretty sad that a relatively bright writer would waste our time making up ideological distinctions to push an agenda; in this case, the "liberal" one. The only people who see there is a "center-right" are liberals. They "rightly" do this to describe their betrayal by the political machine: "Oh we voted for the Democrats, but they just perpetuate the same non-liberal policy". So now he takes a rigged poll to try to make the case that the voting public is actually liberal, so Democrat leaders should stop listening or appointing non-liberal bureaucrats.

I got some bad news. Even with the spectacular failure of the Republican administration, there was less than a 5% difference in the popular vote for the "alleged" liberal candidate. You liberals are no different than the neocons of the past eight years: "The Republican candidate won, the 1% margin is a MANDATE to invade the world and put in a laisse-faire cutthroat economic policy". The era of Ted Kennedy, tax people to help the poor in big gov't programs IS OVER. Come back to the real world, and realign your political platform. Stop talking about gov't helping the poor, the illegal immigrants, and whatever else DOESN'T sell, and talk about how gov't can HELP make society better, with national health care insurance, or individual subsidy for college education, etc.. That is the only way you will get what is IMPORTANT to you in this economic/political climate.

[killmenow]

I like your comment except for the "you liberals" part.

[trayhezy]

Herein lies the problem. When one party wins they take it to mean that the country supports "their" agenda when in actuality it is that the party that was in power swung to far in their agenda. The republicans went "too far" to the right, and now it is up to Obama to keep the Dems from going "too far" to the left.

You argue if the country is center-right or center-left all day but one must recognize that the keyword is "center"

[TruthBeHeard]

Where are you getting "less than 5%"? Everyplace I look has 53% to 46%... that is 7%!

However, even 5% is considered a landslide.

[poomplet]

I dunno...the fact that gay marriage was defeated in FRIGGEN CALIFORNIA sure as hell tells me there hasn't been a sea-change towards the left!!

[Rrhain]

Huh? Have you forgotten that Prop 22, which was what the Supreme Court ruling overturned, was passed here in California by over 60%? Prop 8 squeaked by with only 52%.

How is that not a sea-change toward the left?

[poomplet]

It passed (they BOTH passed)....in one of, if not THE most progressive states in the country.

I don't mean "progressive" as in the pompous, transparent attempt for hardcore liberals to re-badge themselves, but in the real sense of the word. To me...a Chicagoan...California has always led in the areas of social & environmental change. It has also been one of the earliest & strongest proponents of gay rights, allowing civil partnerships in 1992.

While I KNOW CA is not the hippie, hard-left state that many Americans mistakenly believe it is...we ALL thought (and you did too), that the defeat of Prop 8 was a lay-up. The fact that did not happen, in my opinion, is a sign that we are indeed still a right-centrist nation.

[trisha08]

Let's not forget that the Mormon church sent out an army of people and money to fight gay marriage in California. The ads they ran promoted fear that our entire society would fall apart if gays are allowed to marry. They really "sold" some untruths. Which is always really nice for a so-called Christian organization. I don't think it would have been defeated if the Mormon's hadn't promoted scare tactics.

I didn't see the Mormon's come out against polygamy during the raid of the FLDS in Texas. So, I guess it's O.K., for men to marry multible wives and have sex with 12 year old girls. But, two consenting gay adults getting married? Not on their watch.

[VikingQuest]

So if we were all center left and in favor of higher taxes and bigger government wouldn't we support all these bailouts?

[Rrhain]

Huh? The issue isn't the bailout, per se. It's the lack of oversight. Witness the current issues with the bank money: Half of it gone, no auditing, what little we do know shows that it is being spent on executive toys, and now they want the other half with no questions asked? Please.

The reason Congress has such a poor approval rating has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with job performance. They were elected to provide the needed check on the Bush Administration and have failed on every count.

[LDnearthesea]

That was the failure of Pelosi and Reid, who caved in on all the important issues to Bush/Cheney. Now I wonder if they'll let investigations into the Bush/Cheney dictatorship take place, so that they will end up in jail and out of harm's way (to the American people) or fleeing in their corporate jets down to Paraguay. Bush isn't going to pardon anyone, because in his hubris they didn't commit any crimes to be pardoned from! Regarding the left/right issue: those talking heads are hand-picked by corporate heads to act as ministers of propaganda for corporations whose only concern is to make as much money as possible and pay as little in tax as possible. Therefore, spreading lies like 'less tax increases business activity' is almost a daily mantra from the corporatist TV press. Then there's the issue of the Iraq War. There was little corporatist TV coverage of all the protests against the start of the war in Feb. and March of 2003. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets, city councils had votes against starting the war; on CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, and FOX, you wouldn't have known any of this. Only Free Speech TV or Democracy Now bothered to cover these stories. By the way, when two 'liberals" like Maddow and Olbermann get TV shows on MSNBC, realize that's the corporatists throwing out a bone to the majority of left-center thinkers that make up our nation!

[hjfraser2002]

No

[1differentdrummer]

Wow, that reasoning is blindingly brilliant.

[gino618]

Since when is 'Helping the less fortunate' a red / blue issue?

You're really stretching to prop up your own views on something like that.....

[michiganfan]

"Since when is 'Helping the less fortunate' a red / blue issue?"

Since the Civil Rights movement.

[LeftRight]

Since National Security or Fiscal Responsibility became a red/blue issue! The fact of the matter is that the right is more likely to spend money directly on charity, while the left is more likely to have the govt give a hand up from the govt, which is more stable than charity.

[toypiano]

Since capitalism.

[gino618]

Surveying 3167 people out of 310 million extrapolating ANY conclusion is an exercise in futility.

[michiganfan]

You have obviously never taken a statistics class...

[curly2]

...or heard of pre-election polls.

[jinxed]

Anything to believe in center-right!

[BertrandRussell]

I have to agree with michiganfan on this one. Learn a little bit about statistical methodology, you'll be glad you did.

[SuperBowlXX]

I self-identify as liberal and I agree the whole center-right meme is BS. Furthermore I think this article shows some interesting data. However, I think there's definitely a possibility of survey bias for at least one of the items. This one in particular:

"it is our duty to help the less fortunate"

I mean, I don't know if it's correct to identify that as a "blue" or "left" position. I think we characterize it as a liberal position because liberal voters tend to place more emphasis on providing equal opportunity, whereas conservative voters tend to favor business and inequality of outcomes (and at the same time decrying the "welfare state"). But it depends how you phrase it. If you said, "it is our duty to help the less fortunate", I think even a lot of Republican voters would say that helping the less fortunate is a good thing (hence why 77% agree with it). It doesn't seem useful to me to automatically default the item as a liberal position without going into further specifics.

I believe it would be more useful to take each of those items and summarize how each voting bloc (blue, red, purple) agreed or disagreed with them. For example, what percentage of blue/red/purple voters agreed with this statement, that statement, etc. That responses from the blue+purple and red+purple groups would probably tell us better where the center of the country lies (I, for one, expect that it's center-left).

[mjtaylor22]

I AM SICK OF THIS ITS ME NO ITS U MENTALITY, I AM IN NO CATEGORY i AM AN aMERICAN, WITH fREEDONM OF SPEECH ANDCHOICE THAT OUR FOREFATHERS BLED AND DIED FOR, STOP DIVIDING MY NATION,
STOP THESE LABLES, AND CATEGORIES, BECAUS EIF WE ARE NOT AMERICANS FIRST,
WE WILL SURELY BE COME CHINA, OR RUSSIA, ONVCE THEY BUY THE REST OF OUR COUNTRY OUT FROM UNDER US

[killmenow]

If everyone starts commenting in ALL CAPS then I will move to friggin' Timbuktu.

[LeftRight]

Is your caps lock on???

[The Chad]

This article is well done but the "and it drives a final stake into the center-right talking-point" is a bit over-zealous (Michael Moore-ish). State the facts and let the reader think that on their own.