Of course he's reading the polls, and of course he's rebuffing the more extreme elements of his party. As any politician who wants to get reelected would. That all means absolutely nothing. Unless you believe there is a significant fraction of the population out at the edge. What do you think the distribution looks like? I suggest it is a bell curve. Do you disagree? barfo
It's nothing like a bell curve. If anything it's skewed far to the right with few extreme right wingers and lots of extreme left wingers. Something like this:
40% of people say they're conservative. That would skew it to the right like that. if it were 50% conservative and 50% liberal (in varying degrees), it'd be a bell curve.
I really wonder what "40% say their conservative" means to the people asked this question. Obviously, if you think a lot about politics, "conservative" has got a reasonably clear definition. But a lot of people who are asked this question may be thinking, "I'm conservative in that I don't want too much change at once." But that might be in reference to their own personal lifestyle--they like living in the same town they grew up in, they don't like changing jobs, etc. It might have nothing to do with their opinions about abortion or medicare or the war in Iraq. My brother, who is a great guy but not always the brightest bulb, might consider himself "conservative" because he thinks conservation is pretty cool. I don't think "liberal" has such a broad range of positive implications. A "liberal" is some hippie in the 60's who doesn't shower. A liberal use of grease on a cake isn't really a positive. "Liberal" is often used as one step away from "excessive." Add in that there's been a pretty successful campaign to demonize the term ever since Reagan, and it's not hard to see why fewer people self-identify as liberal. Because such labels are so tainted by unintended connotations, it seems that they aren't terribly useful in describing a population. It's a lot more direct and instructive to just ask people what they think about a topic, as opposed to how they paint themselves with a broad label.
Here's an interesting article on the topic by conservative reformer David Frum: http://www.theweek.com/article/index/97743/The_urgent_case_to_reform_conservatism
mook, You're echoing what I've been saying in this thread. Especially this bit: And this is what I wrote in post #63:
I don't think your survey means anything, but if you are going to worship it, then you have to pay attention to it. According to the survey, there are more "very conservative" than "very liberal" . You are claiming the opposite. Reality is, it's a bell curve. Put the center wherever you like. barfo
It's mathematically impossible it's a bell curve given the polling data and the data verified by mook's posts. The far right wing nutcases would be the militias and neo-nazi types, right? Well there just aren't that many of those. The far left wing nutcases would be dailykos and Bernie Sanders types. I was quite happy with that graph I found fitting. Additionally, it is a good visual about what portion of the electorate either side has to get to win.
The poll that you like so much disagrees. Take another look, there are almost twice as many very conservatives as very liberals. Reality is, it is a bell curve. Everything like this is. barfo
Even if your premise were true (it isn't), 2x more very conservatives and 40% conservatives as a whole would skew your bell curve almost exactly like the graph I presented. A bell curve requires a normal distribution, and the data isn't a normal distribution. Now, if the data in question were party affiliation, it'd be skewed toward the Democrats, but that is a different matter. If the data were votes in the last election, the curve would be skewed Obama's way. Get it?
Right, if we are talking about the results of that survey, and not anything that actually matters, then the distribution is skewed towards conservatives. If we are talking about reality, the distribution will be a bell curve. barfo
No, stuff like this is almost always a bell curve. You'd need to make a case that this is something special to justify some other distribution. barfo
The case is 40% say they're conservative, 20% say they're liberal. Skewed by quite a bit to the conservative side of things. And stuff like this is almost never a bell curve.
I'd say the comparison is more like the Rush Limbaugh/Bill O'Reilly types would be a better comparison to Dailykos and Bernie Sanders. The real fringe on either side are the militias/neo-nazis on the right, and the PETA/Greanpeace types on the left. I'm pretty left of center. I'll sometimes read DailyKos, and years ago I read one of Sanders' books. But you'd never catch me at a PETA or Greenpeace rally. I bet most of the liberal posters here would agree with me. BTW--I think it's pretty nutty to suggest it isn't a bell curve distribution, when you go beyond the silly labels of liberal/conservative and get down to actual issues. Abortion, the Iraq war, Medicare, gay rights....you name the policy, and the extreme positions of Limbaugh or Sanders don't really represent the centrist positions of the majority of Americans. And the opinions of the general public certainly don't reflect the opinions of militia-types or PETA.
One other thought--I think you could probably make two separate bell curves. It would bulge a little to the right for people over 30, and bulge a little to the left for people under 30. You'd also see different bulges by states.
Limbaugh/O'Reilly are where the peak of the distribution would be. Look at their audiences, which are huge. Not that I particularly like this fact.
Look at the online audience size for liberal blogs like Dailykos, which are also huge. Look at the audience sizes for them liberal media elites at ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Time, Newsweek, NPR, etc, which is freakin' enormous. Pat Buchanan says Limbaugh gets 30 million listeners. I don't know if that's true or not. Others say 20 mil, others say less. Here's an article on why nobody really knows: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/06/AR2009030603435.html Anyway, there are 300 million Americans. So 1 in 10 maybe listens to his show. Likely a lot less. It's not hard to imagine that bunch of listeners filling up some part of the right side of the bell curve. But dominating the middle of it? Maybe if their waistlines are as big as Limbaugh's, I suppose....
Fox dwarfs CNN, Time, Newsweek, NPR, etc. The national networks have a benefit of being accessible over the airwaves, while Fox/CNN are not. http://trends.google.com/websites?q=nytimes.com%2C+dailykos.com%2C+foxnews.com&geo=all&date=all&sort=0 or better yet: http://trends.google.com/websites?q...oxnews.com, msnbc.com&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
