Are moderate conservatives tired of today's GOP?
By Richard K. Barry
A new poll by ABC News/Washington Post finds that 49 percent see the Democratic Party favorably, while 42 percent see it unfavorably. Not great, but not awful. If you want awful, the GOP registers in the negative by a margin of 39-53 percent.
As ABC News reports:
One other thing I found interesting in the ABC/Post survey was that just 32 percent see the Tea Party favorably, down 9 points from spring 2010.
Pollsters tell us that America is a more ideologically conservative than liberal country. I found a Gallup poll from 2011 that claims 40 percent of Americans think of themselves as conservative, 35 percent as moderate, and 21 percent as liberal. I don't know about the numbers, but I suspect the general sentiment is true.
If so, the only way to explain it may be that a lot of conservatives are unhappy with what has become of the GOP. I'm going to guess that a lot more moderate conservatives are unhappy with the radicalism of the party than radical righties are unhappy with the party being too moderate. Tea Party numbers being down could explain this.
It would be interesting to know the ideological makeup of those independents but it probably makes sense that they are marginally more conservative than liberal if the country is.
I'm just speculating, but one thing for sure is that if Romney loses in November, there is going to be a real civil war for the soul of the Republican Party between those who will say the party got too radical versus those who say it wasn't radical enough.
I'm a Democrat, but I have to think a moderate Republican candidate backed by a halfway sane party would be in much better shape at this point than Mitt.
(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)
A new poll by ABC News/Washington Post finds that 49 percent see the Democratic Party favorably, while 42 percent see it unfavorably. Not great, but not awful. If you want awful, the GOP registers in the negative by a margin of 39-53 percent.
As ABC News reports:
Self-identified Democrats and Republicans are broadly positive about their chosen parties, by 89 and 84 percent respectively in this poll, produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates. Among independents, that plummets to about four in 10 for both parties.
The difference is that 32 percent of Americans in this survey identify themselves as Democrats, vs. 25 percent as Republicans, levels that have held essentially steady the past three years. That's down for the GOP, which achieved parity with the Democrats in 2003 but has lost ground since. (Independents now predominate, accounting for 39 percent in this survey.)
Intensity of sentiment is another challenge for the Republican Party: Substantially more Americans see it "strongly" negatively than strongly positively, 33 percent vs. 18 percent, while the Democratic Party breaks even (28 percent on both sides).
One other thing I found interesting in the ABC/Post survey was that just 32 percent see the Tea Party favorably, down 9 points from spring 2010.
Pollsters tell us that America is a more ideologically conservative than liberal country. I found a Gallup poll from 2011 that claims 40 percent of Americans think of themselves as conservative, 35 percent as moderate, and 21 percent as liberal. I don't know about the numbers, but I suspect the general sentiment is true.
If so, the only way to explain it may be that a lot of conservatives are unhappy with what has become of the GOP. I'm going to guess that a lot more moderate conservatives are unhappy with the radicalism of the party than radical righties are unhappy with the party being too moderate. Tea Party numbers being down could explain this.
It would be interesting to know the ideological makeup of those independents but it probably makes sense that they are marginally more conservative than liberal if the country is.
I'm just speculating, but one thing for sure is that if Romney loses in November, there is going to be a real civil war for the soul of the Republican Party between those who will say the party got too radical versus those who say it wasn't radical enough.
I'm a Democrat, but I have to think a moderate Republican candidate backed by a halfway sane party would be in much better shape at this point than Mitt.
(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)
Labels: 2012 election, Democratic Party, polls, Republican Party
posted by Richard K. Barry at
1:00 PM
1 Comments:
I tend to think that what people call themselves has more to do with the relentless vilification of the word "liberal" than anything. When I talk to Republicans, most of them have some very liberal ideas on policy. And their general level of knowledge about what is actually happening in government is very poor. I talked to a conservative last night who claimed that the ACA was the government taking over healthcare. I explained the individual mandate with reference to the requirement that drivers have auto insurance. His response, "That's all it is? I didn't know that!" But it doesn't matter. In a week, I will talk to him again and he will still maintain that the ACA is a government takeover of medicine. I can't compete with the constant drum beat of conservative propaganda. But if the guy got what policies he really wanted, they would generally be to the left of the Democratic Party.
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Frankly Curious, at 1:40 PM
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