Misrepresented Data Seems To Make Them Feel Better

The Fox"Nation" has a highlighted story around a poll by Gallup that appears to show that "conservativism" is the dominant ideology in America.

Thus far in 2009, 40% of Americans interviewed in national Gallup Poll surveys describe their political views as conservative, 35% as moderate, and 21% as liberal. This represents a slight increase for conservatism in the U.S. since 2008, returning it to a level last seen in 2004. The 21% calling themselves liberal is in line with findings throughout this decade, but is up from the 1990s.

While looking at the figures from the particular perspective can provide supplication for those that are railing against the Obama adminstration, perhaps even validating their silly, little, tea-parties, the numbers tend to shift when the data is more detailed in your polling sample.

In this [ State of American Political Ideology ] study, however, the electorate is broken down using a more expansive five-point scale of political ideology that reflects the variety of approaches people ascribe to today. Employing this more calibrated measure, 34 percent of the country identifies as “conservative,” 29 percent as “moderate,” 15 percent as “liberal,” 16 percent as “progressive,” and 2 percent as “libertarian.” After moderates are asked which approach they lean toward, the overall ideological breakdown of the country divides into fairly neat left and right groupings, with 47 percent of Americans identifying as progressive or liberal and 48 percent as conservative or libertarian. The rest are unsure or scattered among moderate and other approaches.

You can see the full, detialed, report from American Progess here.

See which demographic you fall into. Take the quiz

I scored in the "very progressive" catagory. It's a rather interesting quiz.