Battleground Poll August 2004 - The Growing Conservative Majority
By Bruce Walker (09/01/04)
The rock solid statistic in the latest Battleground Poll, the number that actually means something, the salient political fact that I have been raising in articles for the last several years, is found in the "housekeeping" section of the questionnaire: Question D3 on Page 11 of the sixteen page questionnaire.
It bears repeating: "When thinking about politics, do you consider yourself to be..." and then it lists six options for responders, which are "Very conservative," "Somewhat conservative," "Moderate," "Somewhat liberal," "Very Liberal," and "Unsure/Refused."
Precise recitation of these options is important because Leftists typically respond to polls which show that America is conservative by saying something like "Oh, no - it is really moderate, not conservative" or "Most people do not really have an ideological position."
That is completely false. This Battleground Poll, like the five before it over the last four years, have given Americans the easy option of calling themselves a "moderate" or of simply saying that the "don't know" or "refused to answer."
Those Americans who call themselves conservative in this latest Battleground Poll constitute exactly sixty percent of the American public. The rest - all of the rest, including "moderates" and "unsure" and "refused to answer" and every shade of "liberal" - constituted exactly forty percent of the American public.
Those who actually called themselves "Somewhat liberal" or "Very liberal" was only thirty-four percent. The difference between "conservatives" and "liberals" in America is today a whopping twenty-six percentage points.
If every conservative voted for President Bush and Republican candidates, and every other voter voted for Senator Kerry and Democrat candidates, the result would be a landslide virtually unprecedented in modern American political history. Kerry would struggle to carry his home state of Massachusetts and might well lose every state in the Union.
If every conservative voted Republican and every liberal Democrat and the rest stayed home or broke evenly, Democrats would lose almost every Senate race in the nation and a landslide defeat at every other level - congressional, state and local.
What is more remarkable is that these Battleground Polls are consistent in showing an overwhelming conservative majority over liberals, moderates and indifferent Americans, but that these very thorough polls show the divide between "conservative" and "liberal" has never been greater. Since June 2002, Battleground Polls have showed an overwhelming majority of Americans (not just Americans who chose "conservative" or "liberal" were conservatives.)
In September 2003, a bit under sixty percent of Americans called themselves "conservative" while thirty-five percent of Americans called themselves "liberal." In April 2004, the Battleground Poll showed a bit under sixty percent of Americans were "conservative" while thirty-seven percent of Americans were "liberal.."
What about the Battleground Poll a couple of months ago, in June 2004? Fifty-nine percent of Americans called themselves "conservative" while thirty-eight percent of Americans called themselves "liberal."
As the campaign has gotten more serious, the gap between "conservatives" and "liberals" has widened from twenty percentage points to twenty-six percentage points - a wider gap than any of the previous Battleground Polls. Kerry, the most liberal member of the United States Senate, cannot long pretend that he is not distinctly to the Left of President Bush. The party that allowed him to be anointed cannot long pretend that it did not know he was a Leftist.
Forget the trial heats in that poll. Polls are already beginning to show that Americans are paying attention to the ideology of the candidates and their parties and there is a distinct drift toward President Bush. The more Americans look at the two candidates and their parties, the more Americans will move toward the Republican Party and a Bush landslide.
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