The Best News Yet in the Battleground Poll and Conservative Strength
By Bruce Walker (07/27/07)
Over the past five and a half years I have been encouraging conservatives to take heart: we are the overwhelming majority of Americans. Consistently, the Battleground Poll, which is a comprehensive poll conducted jointly by a Republican polling organization and a Democrat polling organization and which reveals all the internals of its polls, has shown in Question D3 outstandingly good news for conservatives.
Respondents are asked, point blank, to identify themselves and there are exactly six responses that respondents are allowed to give: “very conservative,” “somewhat conservative,” “moderate,” “somewhat liberal,” “very liberal,” and “unsure.” In every single poll since early 2002, and there have been nine separate Battleground Polls, spaced apart by six months or more, those Americans who consider themselves “very conservative” or “somewhat conservative” overwhelmingly outnumber all the other four categories combined. In every single one of these polls, if a Republican candidate simply carried all the conservative voters, he would win a landslide almost unprecedented in American history.
When I have mentioned this disparity in my other articles, I invariably receive comments – some from conservatives and some from liberals – asking what sort of cigarettes I am smoking. People simply refuse to believe that the overwhelming majority of Americans are conservatives. Yet the results of the Battleground Polls have been absolutely consistent in the past and the Battleground Poll itself is the most respected and objective poll taken – the bipartisan poll digs very deeply in its questions.
Did all of this change after the 2006 election? No. As I noted in my January 2007 article “The Battleground Poll and Conservative Strength,” in the January 2007 Battleground Poll, fifty-nine percent of Americans described themselves as “very conservative” or “somewhat conservative” while only thirty-four percent of Americans described themselves as ‘very liberal” or “somewhat liberal.” I also note that in all the Battleground Polls, the percentage of Americans who call themselves “very conservative” or “somewhat conservative” has never been lower than fifty-nine percent of the population and the number of Americans who call themselves “very liberal” or “somewhat liberal” has never been greater than thirty-eight percent of the population.
So has the savaging of the Bush Administration, fatigue over the war in Iraq, rising gas prices, or any of the invented scandals of the Left changed the opinion of the American people? Are conservatives now a minority in our nation? In late July 2007, the results of the latest Battleground Poll were released. As always, ignore who people intend to vote for and which party wins generic ballots – these reflect the perceptions of people about whether candidates or parties are conservative or liberal.
Look at good old question D3. How do Americans, who have been pummeled for the last several years about the dangers of the “Far Right,” describe themselves? The answer is astounding. It runs exactly contrary to what the mainstream media and even many conservative media outlets are saying. Not only are conservatives a majority in America today, but never in the history of the Battleground Poll has the percentage of Americans who are conservative been greater. Sixty-three percent of Americans, as of late July 2007, identified themselves as “very conservative” or “somewhat conservative.” Only thirty-three percent of Americans identify themselves as “very liberal” or “somewhat liberal.” Two percent are those all important “moderate” voters and two percent “don’t know.”
As of today – right now – conservatives outnumber liberals in American by a margin of almost two to one, easily the widest gap in the history of the Battleground Poll. If a candidate was perceived by the American people as a conservative and the opposing candidate was perceived by the American people as a liberal, the conservative would win the largest landslide in terms of percentage of the popular vote in the history of the two party system in American politics.
What about the “intensity” factor? Those who consider themselves “very conservative” constitute eighteen percent of the electorate, while those who consider themselves “very liberal” are a pathetic six percent of the electorate. All the venom that has been spewed on the Republican Party, on talk radio, on Fox News seems to have backfired. The conservative majority in America has grown bigger than ever.
Perhaps that explains why Hillary recently announced that she was not really a “liberal,” but rather a “progressive.” It certainly explains why the smartest thing that the Republican Party can do in 2008 is to make it as clear as possible that its candidates, from the top of the ticket on down, are unapologetic conservatives and that the Democrats are all liberals. The news today is great. Let us see if the Republican leadership finally pulls its head out of the sand and acts like conservatives.
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