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Clay BurellStudy contesting the "America is a Center Right country" meme. Data suggests the majority favor progressive ideals.
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07 Nov 08
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Even when Democrats win, conservatives claim that their ideology is still dominant.
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In truth, however, the Democratic class of 2006 was remarkably progressive. According to a survey conducted by Media Matters, all 30 newly elected House Democrats who took Republican seats advocated raising the minimum wage, supported changing course in Iraq, and opposed any effort to privatize Social Security. All but two supported embryonic stem cell research and only five described themselves as "pro-life" on the issue of abortion. Thirty-seven House and Senate candidates who promoted "fair trade" rather than "free trade" won; none of them lost.9 Candidates in the freshman class who were conservative on a particular issue got the lion's share of attention, but they were a distinct minority.
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Democratic victories are understood as the product of the Democrats moving to the right, while Republican victories are the product of a conservative electorate.
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Conservatives believe in small government; they prefer free markets and individuals to manage things as much as possible. Progressives believe in a more active government that performs more functions and provides more services.
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Polling shows that the public is much closer to the progressive view. The latest survey of the National Election Studies (NES) shows, for example, a preference for a vigorous government role in a complex world. Sixty-seven percent said we need a strong government to handle complex economic problems. Nearly 58 percent said government should be doing more, not less; and 59 percent agreed that government has grown because the country's problems have grown.
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Between 1982 and 2004, the NES asked whether the government should cut government services and spending, or increase them. With the exception of a period during the mid-1990s, for more than two decades, Americans have expressed a preference for increasing the role of government.
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For the past twenty years, Pew has been tracking support of a government safety net for the poor. With remarkable stability -- though there was a small decline in the 1990s and a small increase in the new century -- it shows that people want a safety net. More than two-thirds (69 percent in 2007) believe the government "should care for those who can't care for themselves." They feel so strongly about it that more than half (54 percent) are willing to incur greater debt to get it done.
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GSS polling since 1978 reveals a clear and steady preference for government action to achieve income equality. With the brief exception of 1994, the year of the Republican takeover of Congress, people have expressed a preference for government action to reduce income inequality. As the chart below indicates, the average difference over the study period was more than 14 percentage points.
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48 percent of Americans believe the U.S. is harmed by the global economy. Only 25 percent believe the U.S. benefits. On an individual level, more people think that they personally, their children, and the people in their community are more harmed than helped by the global economy.
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These opinions need not reflect progressive attitudes, but they do indicate that the standard position of conservatives (and the consensus establishment) -- support for unfettered trade -- is not particularly popular among the public.
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American unions are in decline, but not because of public attitudes. The American people like labor unions. Pew Research registers a 56 percent favorable opinion of unions and 33 percent unfavorable.18 Gallup registers 59 percent approval and 29 percent disapproval.19 Gallup also shows that 38 percent of people want unions to have more influence in the country, compared to 30 percent who want them to have less influence. In labor disputes, 52 percent of people polled said they sympathized with the union compared to 34 percent who took the side of the company.
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A majority of Americans think their taxes are too high, a conservative theme, but they don't care about it that much. Taxes generally rank low in the list of Americans' priorities, and taxes are never number one.
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When a Zogby poll taken after the election asked voters what was "the most urgent moral problem in American culture," 33 percent picked "greed and materialism," 31 percent chose "poverty and economic justice," 16 percent said abortion and 12 percent said same-sex marriage.27 As one pair of researchers put it, "[T]he moral values item on the issues list cannot properly be viewed as a discrete issue or set of closely related issues; that its importance to voters has not grown over time; and that when controlled for other variables, it ranks low on the issues list in predicting 2004 vote choices."28
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To most Americans, moral values do not mean Terri Schiavo, gay marriage, or stem cell research. To the contrary, moral values represent fundamental principles. To paraphrase Robert Fulgham, moral values are what we all learned in kindergarten.29 Share. Wait your turn. Treat others as you want to be treated yourself. But even on the issues by which conservatives would like moral values defined, the public is much closer to the progressive side.
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On matters of sexual orientation, conservatives are often thought to be closer to the American majority. But this is only because the nature of the questions being debated has changed so dramatically. Just a few years ago, almost no one imagined that Americans would be arguing same-sex marriage; instead, we were debating whether discrimination in housing and employment was acceptable. On those questions, a consensus has emerged in favor of equality.
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It's fair to say that homosexuality is not fully accepted in every regard. But the trend is unmistakably in a progressive direction. When Howard Dean began his presidential campaign in 2004, his support of civil unions for gays as governor of Vermont was seen as alien to American values. Today support for civil unions is the median position of the American voter, and even Republican presidential candidates claim to have no objection to a state passing a civil union law if its voters want one.
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Other issues show the same pattern. In 1987, 51 percent of Americans told Pew that "[s]chool boards ought to have the right to fire teachers who are known homosexuals." Two decades later, the number had fallen to 28 percent.
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Even posed against long-standing and seemingly appealing alternative-tax cuts -- Americans express a preference for expanding access to heath care. More than three-quarters (76 percent) polled by CBS News and The New York Times in February said access to health care was more important than maintaining the Bush tax cuts -- and three in five said they would be willing to have their own taxes increased to achieve universal coverage.
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If Americans are so progressive, why don't more say so?
When asked for evidence, advocates of the idea that America is a conservative country will often cite the fact that polls show more people labeling themselves as "conservative" than "liberal." This is certainly true, as data from the NES show:
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There is an understandable assumption within Washington that if survey respondents answer the ideological self-placement question by choosing "liberal" or "conservative," then their positions on issues roughly correlate with those of the Democratic and Republican parties, respectively; and that if they choose "moderate," then their issue positions are midway between those of the two parties. But in fact, this is not the case. According to the NES, 56 percent of those who call themselves moderates associate with the Democratic Party, while only 31 percent associate with the Republican Party. As one of the authors of this study wrote previously:
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