Conservative bloggers are crowing about a new Gallup poll showing that 40 percent of Americans describe their political views as conservative, topping moderates (36 percent) and liberals (20 percent). The findings represent a change from the 2005-2008 period, when moderates tied with conservatives as the most prevalent group.
There are other areas of concern here for progressives. For one thing, the number of independents describing themselves as conservative rose from 29 percent in 2008 to 35 percent. While political scientists have long warned that ideological self-identification surveys should be taken with a grain of salt — Americans, for the most part, don’t think of themselves in ideological terms — a breakdown of respondents’ views on different issues reflects the same movement. On government regulation of business, labor unions, gun rights, and several other issues, the public has also moved to the right, according to the Gallup poll.
There are several possible reasons for the shift. One, with Democrats in control of the White House and Congress, it’s perhaps inevitable that the uncommitted middle would lean toward checking progressive control of government. In addition, conservatives who may have been turned off by the disastrous Bush administration and drifted to the middle may be coming back home in the age of Obama.
Finally, one can’t overstate the media’s influence in shaping public opinion. Since day one, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and the right-wing noise machine have hammered the administration as unapologetically liberal (even Marxist!), a narrative that is now gospel among the conservative base — and perhaps influences independents as well. But the fact is that the president has been genuinely pragmatic, earnestly seeking common ground with the opposition party and urging caution and prudence on a whole host of issues. As Newsweek put it this week, he “governs like a cerebral consensus builder,” and he’s even taken a lot of grief from the lefty base because of it.
But we shouldn’t be too concerned about the Gallup poll — at least not yet. For one thing, its results are actually nothing blindingly new. Since 1992, Gallup’s results on its political ideology surveys have been generally consistent, with conservatives usually finishing in the 36 percent-40 percent range, moderates fluctuating from 36 percent-43 percent, and liberals ranging from 16 percent to 22 percent. Rather than signaling a new conservative backlash sparked by Barack Obama, as right-wing activists like to believe, the poll actually shows a swing within a narrow range. It’s not great, but it’s not catastrophic.
Another reason for comfort is that the Gallup survey comes on the heels of another poll that showed the GOP at its lowest favorability rating in a decade. Such has been the decline in the Republican Party’s fortunes that even during a year when the percentage of independents identifying themselves as conservative rose six percentage points, the GOP still can’t make any gains.
The lessons are obvious. One, even during a period of conservative resurgence, the Republican Party is still a broken brand. But progressives cannot continue to rely on Republican ineptitude and tone-deafness to keep them in power. We have to assume that the GOP will get its act together at some point and make a play for the middle. Which brings up the second lesson: this is a big country with a whole lot of interests, beliefs, and values to navigate and negotiate. Candidate Obama became President Obama because he understood that and made the tent bigger. It’s up to progressives to make sure that the tent remains big and welcoming.
