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
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.
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.
from bob cesca's blog
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
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 !
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.
You argue if the country is center-right or center-left all day but one must recognize that the keyword is "center"
How is that not a sea-change toward the left?
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.
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.
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.
You're really stretching to prop up your own views on something like that.....
Since the Civil Rights movement.
"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).
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