America Not as Politically Conservative as You Think

Friday 14 January 2011
by: Lee Drutman |
Miller-McCune | Report

Voters self-identify as conservatives for several reasons, only one of which is that it reflects their politics.

Among the many memes floating around in the wake of the 2010 election is that America has taken a rightward turn, and conservative pundits seem re-energized in calling America a center-right nation. After all, a plurality of American voters (42 percent) now call themselves "conservative" — as compared to just 35 percent who say they are "moderate" and 20 percent who say they are "liberal." Two years ago, moderates and conservatives both were at 37 percent.

But new research suggests that pundits ought to be cautious of overinterpreting the conservative label: It doesn't always mean what they think it means: Only a quarter of self-identified "conservatives" may actually be true conservatives on the issues — less than the 30 percent of whom are not conservative at all, but simply like the label.

The reason why so few "conservatives" turn out to be solid right-wingers is that the word "conservative" has different meanings for different people, according to political scientists Christopher Ellis of Bucknell and James A. Stimson of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, who describe their findings in a new working paper, "Pathways to Ideology in American Politics: The Operational-Symbolic 'Paradox' Revisited"

(More here.)