Gallup issued their end of the year poll on self-identified
ideology recently. The headline announced the increase in liberals. The lead
paragraph and graph are below:
Liberal Self-Identification
Edges Up to New High in 2013
Fifteen-percentage-point
conservative advantage ties as smallest to date
by Jeffrey M. Jones
PRINCETON, NJ -- Americans continue
to be more likely to identify as conservatives (38%) than as liberals (23%).
But the conservative advantage is down to 15 percentage points as liberal
identification edged up to its highest level since Gallup began regularly
measuring ideology in the current format in 1992.
But what are we to make of the fact that although 23 percent
of Americans are liberal, a much larger percentage a (38 percent) are
conservative, and 34 percent are moderate?
First, the increase in liberals is small and only one
percent higher than the previous high of 22 percent, which occurred in 2007,
2008, and 2012. Furthermore, the gap between liberals and conservatives is the
same as it was in 2007 and 2008. So there’s not really much news here.
Secondly, I have always been skeptical of measures of
ideology based on self-identification. Since ideology involves a person’s
consistent set of beliefs about the proper role and size of government, I have
trouble believing that people responding to the poll actually know what
liberalism and conservatism mean as well as being politically sophisticated
enough to hold consistent views on issues. My initial concern resulted from
reading Lloyd Free and Hadley Cantril’s 1967 book—The Political Beliefs of Americans: A Study of Public Opinion. My
concern is validated by Christopher Ellis and James Stimson’s recent book—Ideology in America (2012). There are
many Americans (about 22 percent of the population) that are symbolically
conservative (they self-identify as conservatives) and operationally liberal
(they hold liberal issue preferences). What are we to make of these people: Are
they really conservative or are they really liberal? Ellis and Stimson state:
The label “liberal” was never fully
popular, even when a popular Democratic president, in the guise of the popular
New Deal package of social programs, tried to make it so. Part of the reason
for the relative popularity of the “conservative” label rests outside politics:
its relative esteem in contexts well divorced from the political realm. And
part of it rests with the value system that predominates among mainstream
citizens – patriotism, temperance, respect for tradition, and the like – that
citizens use to guide their personal lives and would (all else equal) like to
see guide political life as well. Similarly, operationally liberal preferences
are popular. This is again, at least in part, a result of the relatively weak
opposition expressed by elite conservatives to the specific social goals of
mainstream liberalism. But it is also born, as we have explored, of individual
self-interest, a desire of citizens to receive social benefits of both the
purely individualistic (such as cash redistribution) and collective (clean air
and good schools) sorts.
But we have
seen that, there is no easy resolution to understanding which set of beliefs
are “correct” and which are not. People really are liberals – in the sense that
they see a greater need, at the level of specific policies and issues, for a
stronger government role in providing equality of opportunity, softening the
edges of the market, prohibiting discrimination, and the like. And people
really are conservatives – in the sense that they believe that government
policies should be guided by principles of caution, restraint, and respect for
traditional values, moral and economic.
Does it
matter for American politics that so many Americans mix liberal public policy
preferences with conservative self-identifications? It ought to. Because what
conflicted conservatives take to the voting decision is absence of the
automatic vote. Because they are conflicted between symbols and policy
preferences, they are potentially available to both political parties in
American elections. They can tune into the conservative ideological frames of
Republicans. And equally they like the policy stances of Democrats. As such,
these types of citizens are likely to be critically important to understanding
election outcomes and political change. Consistent operational ideologues
constitute the partisan and ideological bases of the two major parties.
So what should attentive political
observers do about reports of changes in self-identified ideology in the United
States? I would recommend approaching the results with caution. Even
significant changes, which these weren’t, are to be viewed skeptically. Rather,
one should emphasize changes that occur in the public’s policy preferences that
indicate a conservative, liberal, libertarian, or populist trend. One should
also be attentive to the newest generation of voters and their policy
preferences. Are the Millennials conservative, liberal, libertarian, or
populist? Also, what issues most concern them? What generation are
they replacing and what were their policy preferences? These are the questions
that should guide any attempt to understand any change in the public’s
ideology.
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