Ideological self-identification

Commentary By Ron Beasley

When asked a more voters consider themselves conservatives than liberals.  Center Right Nation?  Probably not - when asked about specific policies those "conservatives"  turn out to be pretty liberal.  Keep in mind a majority of voters were in favor of health care reform when it had a public option.  A majority our in favor of a smaller government but they want other peoples programs cut not theirs making it political suicide to suggest any programs be cut.  Just look what happened to Bush and the Republicans when they tried to kill Social Security.  Daniel  Larison observes that the ideological tags like conservative and liberal have little meaning and don't reflect how people vote.

...how many respondents define themselves ideologically has no bearing on how they vote or what policies they prefer. We can see how unreliable these labels are when we look at Gallup�s state-by-state surveys of ideological self-identification and then compare them with state-by-state party ID numbers. There are just five states with significant (+5 or more) Republican party ID advantages, and 33 states where the Democrats have a significant advantage, but if you were to look at the state-by-state result for ideological self-identification you would find that liberals outnumber conservatives nowhere outside D.C. Defenders of the �center-right nation� thesis might be tempted to rejoice at this point, but this just shows how politically meaningless conservative self-identification is in many parts of the country. By party ID and most recently by voting preference, most of the �center-right nation� prefers the center-left party.

Larison concludes with this:

The �center-right nation� story has been something of a curse for
conservatives, because it has convinced many of them that the public is
automatically and instinctively on their side, and they keep relying on
this to provide them with political success. If conservatives
recognized that they are not facing a �center-right nation,� they
wouldn�t necessarily be able to sell the public on proposals such as
Ryan�s, but they would at least understand that they have to persuade a
public that does not share their views. They might then realize that
the public is not going to reward them simply for showing up and
declaring their opposition to the other side.

I am not that concerned that the center-right nation meme is a potential curse for the Republicans - my concern is that it becomes a curse for the Democrats when they buy into it and that's exactly what I have seen happen.  Of course health care reform was a victim of this thinking. Another example is the continuation of the unpopular wars in the middle east.  While a majority oppose them the Democrats are afraid they will be seen as week on defense if they end them.

The biggest danger for the Democrats is they will misinterpret what the teabaggers are all about.

Update:

Our researcher Kat adds this:

Another possibility is that some Democrats insincerely use the
'center-right nation' meme as a convenient excuse/cover for their lack
of support for center-left policies, because their big campaign
contributors or they themselves actually support center-right policies,
in spite of what they say while campaigning..

Home run Kat!