Americans Are Conservative

Every year, Gallup asks Americans to identify their ideology. And every year the answer is roughly the same. This year, as usual, conservatives outnumber liberals by about 2-1. Let’s discuss.

Here are the headline numbers as to how people identify themselves:

● Overall: 41% conservative v. 23% liberal
● On economics: 46% conservative v. 20% liberal
● On social issues: 38% conservative v. 28% liberal

Hmm. So what does this tell us? Well, for one thing it tells us that Americans still can’t stand being labeled as liberals, as only 2 in 10 embrace that label. As an aside, the number of people calling themselves economic liberals has been falling steadily since 2001, when it peaked at 38%. That suggests the Bush/Obama years have discredited liberal economics for a large chunk of Americans.

These numbers also tell us that Americans are much more conservative than you would think. What do I mean? I mean this: because of the herd instinct, which is alive and well within human beings -- with peer pressure advertisements being the most glaring bit of proof -- humans tend toward the center. Our culture actually reinforces this. Indeed, we teach people “moderation in all things” and “extremism” is considered a bad word in almost any endeavor. We tell people to worry about what society thinks, to try to fit in, and to follow the well-chartered path. This is so ingrained that both rich and poor people will identify themselves as “middle class” because they just don’t want to stand too far apart from the crowd. Moreover, on any measurable issue, trait or test, humans form a bell curve in which about 60% fall tightly into the middle with another 20% less tightly in the middle, and the remaining 20% outside on either end. That is the story of humanity.

And that means that if America were “a fair coin” (i.e. randomly distributed) then you would have 60% calling themselves “moderates”, 10% calling themselves “moderate-conservatives” and another 10% calling themselves “moderate liberals”, and 10% calling themselves “conservative” with another 10% calling themselves “liberal.”

But that’s not what we have. Instead, we have 40% calling themselves “conservative.” That means that in America, conservatives are 400% over-represented from what they should be here. Now, it's possible that Americans just drop the “moderate” portion of the “moderate conservative” and “moderate liberal” label, but even if we factor that in, then liberals are exactly what nature predicts -- 20%. But conservatives are still 200% overrepresented. And those extra conservatives have come from the ranks of moderates.

Here are my thoughts on this:

1. This means that conservatism is strongly attractive to Americans because it has yanked away 20% of the public from intense herd-instinct pressure and gotten them to abandon the “moderate” herd. Liberalism, on the other hand, has zero pull.

More than anything, this tells me that conservatives MUST return to selling conservatism to the public and must abandon being just anti-liberals. This is because liberalism is at its core-level of support and cannot be eroded further. Thus, tearing liberalism apart gets us nothing. Instead, we must convince moderates that they are really conservatives. And doing that requires selling our ideas to them so that they join the 20%+ of moderates who have already swung to the conservative camp.

2. We are very close to shifting the heard instinct. When enough people believe something, the herd follows. If conservatives can get above 50%, the rest of the moderates will follow because they are classic herd-followers.

3. This poll also tells us why conservatives need to keep making economic issues front and center. All conservatives need to win over the moderates to their cause on economic issues is about 1 in 4 moderates, whereas we would need to win 1 in 3 moderates on social issues and we face stronger opposition. Conservatives need not fear social issues, but economic issues are where their strength lies and that should always be the lead issues.

4. Conservatives have not yet done a good enough job winning over the public on social issues. I would suggest finding a new strategy to try to convince people that social conservatism works -- I’ll save that for another post.

Finally, I want to point out something said by Joe Scarborough. I don’t like Scarborough because he’s weak-minded and weak-kneed. He is the kind of Republican who is more comfortable as a Democratic-pet than putting in place his own ideas (assuming he has them). He thinks these numbers are generally overblown and he makes the point that even though the public is more conservative than liberal, he thinks conservatives don’t really mean it about being conservative:

“The obvious irony is that while Americans like to think of themselves as rugged individualists who are perfectly capable of pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps, these same cowboys would tar and feather any leader who tried to curb spending on Medicare, Social Security, farm subsidies, defense contracts, student loans or any other part of America's $4 trillion budget.”

This has become a standard liberal/RINO talking point about conservatives and it really highlights the problem with RINOs. The conservatives I know, and their Tea Party allies, are actively trying to shrink all of these things. They’ve vote for politicians promise to cut these things. They even tried to stop the budget because it funded them. They don’t find any cows sacred. Only the RINOs and their big business friends are fighting to the death to defend these things. And liberals use this as cover to keep spending on their friends. This is where things need to change. Conservatives need to get behind proposals to slash all these areas and take away this bit of false cover. And they need to call out the RINOs who make this claim.