I have no doubt that many of you saw the
Pew Research Center poll on political ideology in America when it first came out. I glanced over it and didn't really look at the details until today, when
an article on the decline of economic conservatives in the Republican referenced the Pew's poll. The article encouraged me to look at some of the details in the poll and I was rather surprised by what I found.
The big picture isn't that surprising. According to the typology they used, 18% of Americans are liberal, 15% are conservative, 16% are populists, and 9% are libertarians. The rest, 42%, are either people with a mixture of views or just no real opinions: ambivalents.
When I first saw the poll I glanced over this big picture and ignored the rest of it. But I've now been drawn to these numbers. First, look at partisan affiliation. Conservatives favor the GOP (71% of conservatives are Republicans or lean Republican) and liberals favor the Democrats (82%). No real surprises, although I'm pleased to see liberals more united behind the Democratic Party than Republicans.
But both libertarians and populists favor the Republican Party, even if by smaller margins than the conservatives. Libertarians favor the GOP 50-41 while populists favor the GOP by an almost identical 50-40 margin. And on top of that, ambivalents favor the GOP 46-42.
I was a bit surprised to find a Republican tilt in all three groups. They also have information on how these groups voted in 2004. Kerry won the backing of the vast majority of liberals (88%) and Bush had the support of conservatives (80%). But libertarians, populists, and ambivalents also backed Bush. The margins within libertarians and populists was almost identical.
Does anyone else find it surprising that the Republican Party is so able to balance an appeal to both populists and libertarians without offending one of the groups?