One of the most insipid and insidious claims the far right likes to make is that since more Americans identify as conservative than as liberal, the nation must be aligned with them. They often use this graph as a means to quickly claim something that has long been debunked and fails every verification test, whether in polls, ballot measures or popular elections:
They of course forget the following chart, showing that they are not remotely correct in their assumptions:
But we’re going to go deeper to try to dig this talking point out at the roots, and definitively show that not even the best case scenario for far right Republicans matches their fantasies.
Investigation:
Based on the above, and some other favorable polls for Republicans, the following information is gleaned:
29% of the nation sees themselves as Democrats
27% of the nation sees themselves as Republicans
42% of the nation considers themselves Independent
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1078383/political-party-identification-in-the-us/
Out of those people, this is the ideology breakdown:
Republicans
68% Conservative
25% Moderate
4% Liberal
Democrats
25% Conservative
37% Moderate
34% Liberal
Independents
30% Conservative
45% Moderate
20% Liberal
So if you split that up as most of the people peddling this do, with liberal vs moderate vs conservative, it looks pretty damning for “liberals,” as their population (63,822,000) is about half that of conservatives (126,093,000.00) or moderates (120,054,000.00).
HOWEVER:
If you add them up by party and put them on a range, you get this:
In here you can clearly see that on the left side, there is a higher population (95,700,000) than on the right side (89,100,000), with the bulk of the nation in the middle (138,600,000).
If you include moderates, you might salvage some of the far right talking points. The “new left” (counting from left moderate to progressive) gives a population of 119,592,000, while on the “new right” side (counting from moderate right to far right) you have a population of 128,007,000, or 7% more right wing. Not the 50% more they seem to try to claim, but it gets worse for them.
See, the center moderates tend to vote liberal, because while many consider themselves to be center moderate, because of the outlandishness of the right wing in the USA, they tend to have no other viable choice. True independents split 55% Dem to 45% Republican on average in elections (presidential elections can swing wildly, but congressional ones stay relatively the same).
That means if you add the respective population of the center to each side, you get a grand total of Right wing 152,955,000 and Left wing 153,895,500. And that’s just in expressed party and independent voting record.
In poll after poll, Americans side with liberals on almost all the issues of the day.
https://prospect.org/power/americans-liberal-even-know/
And when it comes to human rights, the right wing loses most of their moderate support in an instant. I wonder if you’ve done anything recently to provoke them?
Conclusion
Republicans aren’t more numerous, they’re just more extreme. The range is clear; while most Americans live in the middle, most Republicans live on the fringe right.
This outdated talking point means nothing when the results of every other means of investigation, even in the best case for Republicans, show themselves to not speak for the people of the USA, let alone for “conservatives.”
The truth appears more to be that there are two large clusters and one spread-out group that make up most Americans, namely the far right, the center, and the entire range of the left. Each is about the same size, it’s just that the center is where the nation masses, the right wing is increasingly extremely fringe right, and the left is a broad spectrum.
What do you think? Is it time for the right to retire this one? And what does it say about “liberal” as a label that even the party of liberals won’t identify as such?