American Liberalism Making a Come-Back

Posted by Daniel De Groot, Open Left at 3:10 PM on July 12, 2008.

A good amount of attention has been paid to the ever larger party affiliation gap that Democrats are enjoying this year.  Unfortunately there is not nearly so much attention paid to the underlying ideological alignment of voters (not much polling on it either).  It is these beliefs that largely impact how elected officials behave with respect to policy, and particularly so for the Democratic party which still has a substantial conservative wing unlike the decimated ranks of the extinct or endangered liberal Republicans.

One thing I want to see the left doing more effectively is laying the blame for the disasterous policies of the Bush Administration and Republican congresses on the ideology that crafted them, namely conservativism.  John McCain is still demonizing "failed" liberal ideas from the 70s and trying to raise the spectre of a second term for Jimmy Carter (a really weak and self-dating attack).  Yet Democrats do not routinely link the failures of Iraq, Katrina and the Economy on the ideology that dreams up all these great ideas like invading unrelated countries after being attacked or handing a large state's energy system over to a bunch of unaccountable sociopaths happy to screw up the grid so prices will increase.  

Despite the relative lack of effort in this area outside of blogs, I'm happy to report that some people are figuring it out, and the lead conservativism has on liberalism is the smallest is has been in decades (I went back as far as 1984):

Source is the General Social Survey.

Now that's the gap, whither conservativism and liberalism in the populace? Some more charts and observations below.

2004 is quite the blip.  Looking at that I have to figure Kerry did surprisingly well considering the prevailing ideological winds.  Gore and Dukakis had far more favourable conditions.  Seeing that Gore did actually win, I think this also explains why Bush ran so hard to the center in 2000 and so hard right in 2004.  

It's also interesting and amusing how conservativism declines as Republican presidencies wear on (look at the end of the Reagan Presidency), but liberalism actually increased toward the end of Clinton's presidency.  Even though it would be inaccurate to call Bill Clinton a liberal, it wouldn't be wrong to suspect the population that were happy with the results of his presidency thought of him that way, and would be more favourable toward liberalism because of it.  

I'm speculating here because I can't find any data on people's attitudes to/beliefs about liberalism/conservativism.  Many polls will ask respondents if they are lib/con/moderate but not why, and only the GSS breaks it down to a 7 point scale to get some indicator of how liberal/conservative a person believes themselves to be.

Anyway, I'm eagerly awaiting the 2008 GSS data.  I could use some more recent polling that asks respondents about their ideology, but I want to compare apples here.  The GSS question asks:

67a. We hear a lot of talk these days about liberals and conservatives. I'm going to show you a seven-point scale on which the political views that people might hold are arranged from extremely liberal - point 1 - to extremely conservative - point 7. Where would you place yourself on this scale?

Which is significant, because though I don't break down the 7 categories in these charts, 12% of the 2006 "liberals" self-rated "slightly liberal."  I think what happens on surveys that only ask between liberal, moderate and conservative that these people all say "moderate" rather than admit they are just like those people who hate America, the dreaded liberals with whom they agree slightly on a few things.

This is an important question because it cuts to, how accurate are these self-identifications?  I don't think it's elitist to say that a good chunk of the population is not well versed in ideological theory to understand that they might be actually more liberal than they thought.  Paul Rosenberg has demonstrated this in his posts on GSS data) showing majorities of self-identified conservatives supporting increased social spending in all sorts of areas.  

Conservatives have been the only ones on the ideological playing field for a long time.  Is it so improbable that a great many people have come to believe "liberal" is a bad thing while holding quite liberal views?  

Finally, this data is yet more proof why Obama does not need to run away from the left or fear being labelled a "liberal" (though liberals may rightly fear him be labelled as one of us) - people don't really mind it that much.  In the long run fixing the negative perceptions of liberalism will really defang the right.

Tagged as: public opinion, ideology, conservatism, liberalism