- BIG NEWS:
- Gay Rights
- |
- Rahm Emanuel
- |
- Barack Obama
- |
- Iraq
- |
|
||
The Big Confusion: "Moderates" and "Independents" Are Not the Same Thing
Read More:
David Brooks, David Hoffman, Dede Scozzafava, Democrats, Independent Voters, Moderates, Ny-23, Public Opinion, Public Opinion Polls, Republicans,
Politics News
What's Your Reaction?
Co-authored by Zeljka Buturovic, PhD
We hear it all the time, "how did he do among independents?"or "she lost among moderates, the independent voters." In a recent New York Times piece, columnist David Brooks divided the electorate into liberals, conservatives, and independents.
This view mistakes a lack of party affiliation for ideological innocence.
For all intents and purposes, moderates are just what they appear to be: an ideological group that is not as liberal as liberals and not as conservative as conservatives. They are a fickle group - read "swing group" - whose policy views can fall anywhere in the wide middle between ideological extremes and make up about 40% of the electorate.
On the other hand, somewhat less than a third of likely voters, who call themselves independents, belong to a group of people who are not affiliated with either party. This is a whole different animal. Almost two thirds of independents are moderates. The rest are either liberals or conservatives, and they are twice as likely to identify themselves as conservative as liberal.
| Democrats | Republicans | Independents | |
| Liberal | 47% | 0% | 13% |
| Moderate | 50% | 26% | 61% |
| Conservative | 3% | 71% | 25% |
| Libertarian | 0% | 2% | 2% |
An extreme example of how independence can be different from moderation can be seen in third parties. Rather than a refuge for moderates who are tired of ideological bickering, recent third parties are more ideologically consistent - and many would say more extreme - than the two main parties. It is not a coincidence that Doug Hoffman in the 23rd congressional district in New York ended up on a third-party ticket. His party officials chose a moderate-to-liberal Republican to run for an open seat in Congress, yet Hoffman struck a responsive chord among conservative Republicans and also very conservative independents.
Many liberals have gloated about the fact that Republican self-identification is lower than that of Democrats. Curiously, conservative self-identification is far more common than a liberal one. Recent Gallup estimates put it at as high as 2:1 ratio. At the same time, a growing contingent of independents is mysteriously moving to the right. The most plausible explanation is that the Republican Party is leaking some conservatives to independents. This weakens the Republican Party, to be sure, but it also makes it harder for Democrats to win over independents.
In respect to ideology, Democrats are more satisfied with their own party than Republicans. To Democrats, ideology and party are, at this moment in history, largely interchangeable. They might assume that the same is true of Republicans or even conservatives, but it's not.
In our November 4 survey, we asked a pair of questions: "Do you think that the Republican Party is too conservative, or not conservative enough?", and "Do you think that Democratic Party is too liberal, or not liberal enough?."
It turned out that Democrats and Republicans have different views of their respective parties. Only about a third of Democrats think that their party is not liberal enough, with about 22% saying it is too liberal. Democrats appear to be delivering what most of their members want.
The Democratic Party is...
| Democrats | Republicans | Independents | |
| Too liberal | 22% | 91% | 62% |
| Not liberal enough | 32% | 2% | 11% |
| Neither/Not sure | 46% | 8% | 27% |
In contrast, almost 60% of Republicans think that their party is not conservative enough, and only 15% think that it is too conservative. In order to meet the wishes of a majority of its members, the Republican Party would need to move a bit to the right.
The Republican Party is...
| Democrats | Republicans | Independents | |
| Too conservative | 80% | 15% | 41% |
| Not conservative enough | 5% | 58% | 26% |
| Neither/Not sure | 15% | 27% | 33% |
A lot has been written about the "civil war in the GOP." The soap opera of NY-23 is a case in point, but there will likely be more - in California, Florida, Kentucky and Connecticut Senate primaries to name just a few.
According to the view most often heard from the left, right-wing extremists are trying to hijack the Republican Party by imposing rigid tests of ideological purity. This will, they suggest, make the base of the party so small that it won't be able to appeal to independents.
The problem with this view is not all independents are moderates, and some of them are likely the very people "hijacking" the Republican Party. There exists a real possibility that making the Republican Party more conservative will expand its base by luring some of the independents into the fold. Conservative backlash that forced Dede Scozzafava from the race is essentially a process that tries to bring the Republican Party and its base into an ideological alignment that already exists among Democrats.
Liberals, as well as moderate Republicans urging the move to the middle, are correct that such a change would not come without a cost. The very process of realignment, as NY-23 illustrates, is a political risk. In addition, realigning Republican Party ideology with that of its base can also come at the cost of losing support among moderates.
Some of those moderates are already Democrats, but there also exists a group of moderate independents who will keep hanging in the middle even if all conservative independents became Republicans. They are the ones genuinely upset with the "smallness of our politics" and they are the ones Obama really cannot afford to lose.
John Zogby is president and CEO of Zogby International, a global polling and market research company. He is the author of The Way We'll Be: The Zogby Report on the Transformation of the American Dream (Random House, 2008).
Zeljka Buturovic has been a research associate at Zogby International since 2008. She holds a doctorate in psychology from Columbia University.
Related News On Huffington Post:
Related Blogs On Huffington Post:
Rep. Earl Blumenauer: "Harvard Beats Yale 29-29" - Thoughts on NY-23
After the flood of last-minute attention forcing the Republican nominee out, and the loss of a seat they had held for over a century, the Republicans should be discouraged, right? Wrong.
Loading comments…
Most Popular on HuffingtonPost
Q4TKSRPW8edSD1pcPhwENjvRnroWMVMwqp9ms0I%2FM3jxeI7dELTa5xu8YdfvqEWv6Oi5UA4kqhimkT4L7%2Bwbv3EGY7flmT9T
13ezNlVtrn5eDTOvheclSGNvlqgunHzTXT0HWh44Mjang8lT5vDs1w%3D%3D
1 of 2
HuffingtonPost Reporters
4EC39kVQlYFVc0XQvyxBqHL06rnY8Hoj
6Zanu8nucCvzYryBA5N1ho47YoEzYrhA
1 of 2
Don't Miss HuffPost Bloggers
1 of 4
Huffington Post Apps and Feeds
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
Independents are like the people who want to keep their options open and will wait until the last minute to see if any really great party invitations or luscious offers arise at the last minute.
In my mind independents fall into two categories. The first are those who have a defined political position that would otherwise put them into the Democratic or Republican parties but they don't like having a label on themselves. They don't want anybody to think that they own their support.
The other type of independent really is looking for something else from their politician rather than just ideaology. What they are looking for is competence and responsibility. That is where folks like Steele and Bachman and Palin are making a big mistake for the party. When they get on TV and say goofy things to 'fire up the base' are they giving the independents a comfort level about being sane and steady and responsible enough to be allowed to run the country?
Good points all.
Excellent point. Independents are much less hopeless than "moderates", who will suffer greatly in the coming decline.
Very interesting. I'd like to know what these labels mean to people. Some political labels are more acceptable in our society than others. I wonder how these perceptions play out in the real world. I think there may be a similar pattern to Americans' identification with middle class. Middle class must be one of the most elastic terms ever; the vast majority would identify itself as middle class, ranging from working poor to near truly rich.
Zogby, this is a good article. I left the Republican Party because I thought they had tried to become Democrat-light, especially during the Bush years. I want fiscal responsibility, lower taxes, less government spending, and a strong national defense. Whoever does that is who I support.
You want to decrease revenues (taxes) and increase expenses (defence) and you say that equates to reducing the deficit (fiscal repsonsibility).
The republicans did what you wanted but it was not fiscally responsible. A conservative today is somebody who believes that the republicans failed to cut the deficit when they increased expenses and decreased revenues. Indeed, Republicans did fail. They are not alchemists.
Republicans will stage a comeback when they learn a simple lesson: you can't make gold out of loead.
yes, the elephant in the room they try to ignore, military spending IS the budget deficit. All the social spending conservatives are opposed to is a raindrop in the ocean by comparison. You could cut social programs to zero and we'd still be piling up huge amounts of debt. And a much worse society for it. Want to see what a place with huge millitary spending and no social programs looks like? Take a long hard look at Africa. You can find plenty of good examples south of the Sahara.
I always thought that "conservative" meant cautious and deliberate. "Conservative" means taking great risks, both financially and internationally, and being reactionary to any change.
And some "independents" -- like Sen. Bernie Sanders -- are socialists. And know what the word means. And are proud to be so.
..errrrr.....Mr. Zogby. Reality has no place in either politics or polling. Republicans don't have to move "a bit to the right" (as though it is possible to move just a bit when things are so polarized already). What do you think they should do....concoct even more names to use to insult Obama? Their sole political methods are lying about and insulting liberals in power and opposing anything and everything that might benefit ordinary people....there is NOTHING LEFT TO OPPOSE that they haven 't already opposed.
Conservatives have successfully propagandized enough seemingly religious people into voting against their own best interests and for those of the richest of the rich. How can they move that extra "bit?" By insisting that we give EVERYTHING to the rich? We are almost there already. The top 15% already own 85% of the resources, and the remaining 85% are being forced to pay the taxes that the rich and corporations used to pay.
If we required corporations with bogus offshore operations to pay taxes, there would be more than enough money for decent healthcare for everybody. How many conservatives (or even moderates) know this? It is all about bamboozling, not about reality.
Did your poll even ask people what form this "movement" might take?
"By insisting that we give EVERYTHING to the rich? We are almost there already. The top 15% already own 85% of the resources, and the remaining 85% are being forced to pay the taxes that the rich and corporations used to pay. "
Think maybe you should access some tax tables and see who actually pays what with regard to federal tax revenues. It's not the lower 85% paying most of the taxes. The upper 15% pay the lion's share of federal taxes.
But of course, it can depend on your definitions. Even if the lower 50% contribute almost zero federal tax revenue, if you look at a given person's total tax output as a proportion of their income, you can see some do pay a significant proportion based on their income in other types of taxation - local level sales taxes, local state and/or city income taxes, payroll tax, real property taxes, ad valorem taxes on non-real property (at least in some states).
Thanks Mr. Zogby... although I think your article is a little lacking... I've been trying to tell people the same thing for weeks... Independent doesn't equal moderate.
One of the things I noticed as a college student... is how politics changed in the 60s. As many people like to point out.... during the Civil Rights fight... there was a mass defection of southerners from the Democratic party into the Republican party. In retrospect... I see that also has happened w/ the Democratic party (w/ the ascent of the DLC in the 90s... and manifested by the Blue Dogs today) ... a mass defection of "non religious" conservatives into the Democratic Party. What's the point of belonging to a party... when they change so indiscriminately? I read an article yesterday that pointed out that today's Democratic party is more conservative than Richard Nixon. Sorry... that doesn't inspire loyalty from me. I'm a lefty that will remain "independent".
Agreed. When Supreme Court Justices go from being very conservative when they were appointed to being liberal when they retire, this country has taken a HUGE leap to the right. I dont understand it, it saddens me, and I blame the shiny happy BS of Reagan for a good chunk of it.
I'm another lefty that will remain Independent. It may keep me from the primaries, but no chance my choices are going to win anyway, not in this culture.
I'm glad you mention this Mr. Zogby because that's how I feel I fit in.
There are two types not mentioned, we the people and special interests.
The lesson we can’t learn is that the war has always been between the special interests and the people.
They have been winning because we, republican and democratic voters, keep arguing over everything under the sun. The special interests encourage this in order to keep us from coming together.
The special interests worst nightmare is that we stop squabbling and join together on the one thing we all agree on, Campaign reform.
We have to stop our shotgun mentality of flying from one popular cause to another
Just pick a problem facing our nation and you'll realize that they are bought by the almighty dollar: gun control, healthcare etc.
Less than two-tenths of 1 percent of the U.S. population gave 86 percent of all itemized campaign contributions for the 2004 elections.
I see on the liberal, republican, and libertarian sites voters like ourselves all cry for campaign reform.
ALL voters agree that our system is corrupt, but it is always the other side. It is both sides and we need leaders to come together on the left and right to come together on this.
Campaign Reform would heal the split of the American people that big money has encouraged in order to weaken us and keep us fighting with each other.
http://www.publicampaign.org/node/40024
Fair Elections Now Act (FENA)
sign the petition
You absolutley nailed it. Will do.
http://www.fairelectionsnow.org/
Sorry
I'm not seeing your link to the petition in your post and couldn't find it on the site. Help?
http://www.fairelectionsnow.org/
Sorry
The alleged conservative advantage evaporates when polls include libertarian, progressive and other viewpoints. Pollsters and party bosses just don't like to hear about the true diversity of American perspectives, it threatens them.
Progressive is simply another label for liberal. Libertarian is a branch of conservatism.
Either group could be members of both major parties, third parties or independent, non-partisan voters.
Party leaders are definitely aware of the ideological demographics and try to figure out how to use them to their favor, you can be sure.
Is one moderate on AN issue, or moderate because he/she is liberal on one issue and conservative on another?
I'd take this "poll"--like all polls--with a grain of salt.
On healthcare, for example, what does being "moderate" mean?
Does that mean compromising?
Compromising is a LOSE-LOSE equation. When compromising, both sides lose, and the resultant product is usually garbage.
On health care, I'm a "liberal" or "progressive" or whatever. Doing it the "moderate" way is what continues to make it NON-FUNCTIONAL. Compromise often makes bad, bad, policy.
This analysis is incomplete without the concepts of swing voters and voter turnout. That's what the parties need to get in order to win, not a particular category of party affiliation, ideological self-identification, or actual ideological opinion. (Note that the last two don't automatically coincide: the conservatives successfully turned "liberal" into a meaningless cuss-word for most people, but without actually changing those people's minds on issues where they in fact hold liberal opinions.)
Gah - when will we stop talking about 'liberal' and 'conservative' as if they are opposites?!!!?!
Republicans are economically liberal more so than the democrats - you have 2 parties:
Dem: Capitalist
Repub: Even more capitalist
The only thing conservative about Republicans is that they want to 'conserve' the LIBERAL status quo!
And what does 'not liberal enough' mean? Less regulation in markets or gay marriage rights?!!?! Two COMPLETELY different things.
We really need to stop talking about the political spectrum in sucha n inane manner!
Unfortunately, most people are not even educated to know the really differences between these political stances.
Just look at the signs calling Obama a "fascist" and a "socialist".
Folks don't know what progressive means, nor conservative for that matter.
And, I really don't know what "liberal" means. It's become more of a slander than a defining ideology. I think liberal means that policies should be followed that keep us free thinking.
Progressive means: government protects its citizens from predatory practices, and government works to empower the voices of all to participate in democracy.
There are textbook definitions and idioms. What progressive means to you is that the same for everyone.
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
