Friday, February 25, 2011

Party Affiliation By State

What is surprising to me is the amount of people that say they are moderate. With the current climate of US politics its hard for me to believe that anyone would consider themselves a moderate about anything. On this day, as we are celebrating the two-year anniversary of the Tea Part Caucus, the Gallop poll begs the question: what is the future of our current 2 (or 3) party system? Maybe, in contrast to Ryan's post yesterday, the new party will not come from the left but rather emerge from the middle. It will be a mixture of people who, in this polarizing epoch, cannot see themselves going in either direction. Maybe Sen Lieberman does have a plan after retirement...

7 comments:

Ian Thresher said...

We analyzed this supposedly huge group of "moderate" or "independent" voters in my Political Parties and Elections class. The reality is that while many people identify as "moderate" most of them lean towards one party or another. Surprisingly, in the 2004 election, someone who considered himself or herself a moderate who leaned republican was more likely to vote for Bush than someone who openly touted himself as a republican. People like to think of themselves as open minded and disinterested in the politics but the reality is that moderates consistently vote for the same party.

TJE said...

President Obama's approval by state:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/146294/Hawaii-Approving-Obama-States-Decline.aspx

Julia G said...

Ian is right. I recently did a lot of research on independents at work and although over 30% of respondents say they're independent, when questioned further more than 2/3 lean either towards the Republican or Democratic parties. The Pew Research center has polled on this issue since around 1985. When people were polled this month, for example, 44% said they were "independent" but actually 16% leaned Republican and 16% leaned Democrat, meaning only 12% of people were "pure" independents.

Julia G said...

Also, the average percentage of pure independents in 2010 was the same as the average percentage in 1990 (13%), and in general the number hasn't changed much over the past 10 years.

njDylan said...

I agree with both of you that people who say they are in the middle really do lean one way or another. Do you think though that parties are beginning to lose their appeal with the people who say they only lean one way or another? I don’t know if that is enough anymore. And TJE what is most surprising is how much Mississippi, the most "Conservative" state in the US, approves of Obama! That, to me, was surprising. It may be a counter-argument to my moderate uprising in that the country is not as polarized as we think.

Julia G said...

http://people-press.org/report/?pageid=1811

njDylan said...

Yea, but what option to these moderates have now? http://www.nationaljournal.com/the-center-falls-apart-20110225

this shows how polarized Congress is, who are the supposed to vote for? Lizard People? http://llnw.image.cbslocal.com/30/2008/12/18/320x240/beltrami_bemidji_2_1_overvote.jpg