Here are six charts showing trends in public opinion among liberals and conservatives over the past 20 years or so. First up is immigration:
The Republican view of immigrants has bounced up and down a bit and is now up by maybe five points or so since 2000. The Democratic view has gone up by 35 percentage points.
(Note that by "up" I mean that the percentage share of partisans who hold the conventional partisan opinion has gone up. For Republicans, it means the share of Republicans who endorse the right-wing position has gone up. For Democrats it means the share of Democrats who endorse the left-wing position has gone up.)
Next is abortion:
Among Republicans, the most extreme view on abortion (always illegal) has gone up by about two points since 2000. Among Democrats, the most extreme view (always legal) has gone up by 20 points.
Same-sex marriage:
Democratic support for same sex marriage is up 50 points. Republican support is down 39 points (that is, they've moved 39 points away from the conservative position).
Next up is guns:
Among Republicans, the conservative point of view has gone up about 10 points. Among Democrats, the liberal point of view has increased by about 20 points.
Here are taxes:
The Republican view of taxes has gone down about ten points (probably due to the Bush tax cuts). The Democratic view of taxes has gone up by about 20 points.
And finally, religion:
Among Republicans, religiosity hasn't changed at all. Among Democrats, it's gone down by nearly 15 points.
Here's a summary:
Question for the hive mind: what conclusions can we draw from all of this?
That Democrats are smarter than Republicans.
Ha! Nice one. Hard to do better than that.
But, in an "ask the audiance" where the ultimate hive mind often picks the right answer, you can see the trends: less organized religion, less pro-gun, and certainly less anti-brown people since the only proposed "wall" just so happens to be on the border where brown people tend to come in.
With the help of republican propaganda, those three losing positions are being whittled down to the true believers, and those true believers are extremely succeptible to propaganda.
That's why Trump, the ultimate divider, was a success to them. At some point, to take one example, hard core religious people give up on trying to persuade others to become more religious and just say f-u.
The biggest mistake, when you look at these charts, is to say "well, what did Trump give them?" -- he gave them exactly, exactly! what they wanted - a daily affirmation that everyone other than them was wrong, and un-American at that.
His presidency was a total success to them. We forget that at our peril.
What is an “ultimate divider?” It realize it may just be another suburban-liberal term of art, but I’m picturing a file-folder contraption with gears and springs that fits neatly on your IKEA desk— did Trump come out w/ one of those?
Well, how would you like to frame it?
1. Democrats have gone off the rails, while Republicans are the same as they always were.
2. Democrats have adapted and grown with the times, while Republicans are stuck in the past.
I incline toward #2, but I'm a pro-choice, pro-gun-control, pro-redistribution atheist who is neutral-to-positive on immigration, so I *would* pick that one.
Jokes aside, I suspect this ties into the shifting nature of the two party coalitions and the changing makeup of the American electorate. If you took this same set of questions and broke it out along various demographic lines, you'd likely find something that tracks.
Option 2 makes no sense, it is a tautology. The "times" are what people think. There is no "times" that are independent of people, that are given to people on a pair of stone tablets from a mountain-top. The "times" are what people make the times to be.
So your option 2 is actually stating "Democrats have adapted to what Democrats want, and grown to what Democrats want, while Republicans have not adapted and grown to what Democrats want".
The reality is that Democrats have radically changed their positions on issues because they have chosen to do so.
You know what? You need to put error bars on these graphs.
You say the Republican view on religion hasn't changed. I see it going steadily downward since 2006. Without error bars based on confidence intervals, it is impossible to say who is right. It is similarly impossible to have confidence in the 2% figure for Republican views on abortion being always legal.
Without a better representation of the data, we can't say anything.
Kevin's description of taxes also seems to be inverted, if up/down refers to the graph lines. What does he mean by "view of taxes"?
Up/down doesn't refer to the graph lines. It refers to movement in the direction supported by the party. So, the conservative position is that taxes are too high, then a movement on the graph toward taxes are too high is "up" for republicans and "down" for democrats, but both are up on the graph.
That the Overton Window has dramatically shifted left in most things, but because we have minority control over the majority, we remain mired in a culture war that was long ago lost by the minority.
Winner.
Or put another way, in the late 90s rank and file lefties realized that the Democratic "Republican Lite" philosophy was a loser, and have been dragging their Dem politicians leftward ever since.
I kinda like that, but would spin it differently. Since the late 90s, Republicans have become so repugnant as to drive rank and file lefties further left.
As someone who is reasonably informed I still have a tough time understanding abortion laws and I think most people have limited understanding of gun laws etc.
I think the chart just show Rupert "I ruin countries with biased news" Murdoch is influencing Republican thought.
A logical person would say that those whose views have not changed have not been "influenced", they've stayed the same. A rational person might suggest that those whose views have changed have been influenced.
All thing considered, not just these polls, partisanship and extreme positions therein have increased over the last 50+ years mostly because Republicans have deliberatedly cultivated division based on race and religion (also sectionality), to distract lower-income whites from growing inequality and plutocracy. Democrats have become more hard-line on some things, but this is largely in reaction to Republican positions. But was the Democrats' increasing approval of immigration a reaction to the Tea-Party/Trumpist racist xenophobia, or is there something else going on?
I would put the inflection point about 1973. There was an important group of Democrats starting to affect policy during the Carter administration, including a belief that "the New Deal is outdated and we must do away with it." Carter himself made the first steps toward deregulation and privatization. Friedrik Hayek and Milton Friedman were the intellectual leaders of the race to the bottom, although they didn't see it that way, of course.
My conclusion would be that the timeline is too short. Double it to 40 years. Republican views really began to shift when St. Ronald the Conveniently Forgetful ascended, not when W bumbled into office.
Radio, I definitely agree with that. BTW, don't forget the strong influences of Newt Gingrich and Lee Atwater in that same timeframe. They very strongly pushed the casting of issues (real or imagined) in the direction that has more-and-more controlled Republican positions ever since.
I think you should take it back to Nixon's Southern Strategy and Goldwater. The sorting has been going on for a long time.
Looks like Democrats have embraced the idea of "open borders" since 2010.
No, they haven't. But feel free to keep just making shit up.
Of course they have.
Is this one of Kevin’s you can make cherry picked numbers say anything admonishment tests?
E.g. on abortion:
slide the x axis to 1992 on the graph and suddenly the “steady” Republicans have views that jump 17 points while the “radical” Democrats move 19 points.
Or on guns:
move the x axis to 2016 and suddenly Republican satisfaction jumps a whopping 28 points in four years, not because of any policy changes but because Trump caressed their nether regions.
As for immigration, circa 2012 Democrats began recognizing dreamers and embraced DACA as the best way to deal with an intransigent Republican Party whose base bristled at humane immigration compromises and whose leaders saw a convenient cudgel to be exploited rather than policies to be fixed.
bingo!
Humane immigration comprises? Republicans just want to keep pumping them in. I mean, the data tells the story. As the populist/peoples party said in the 1890's, immigration is the death of workers.
There's no common ground with cancer.
Social conservatives are increasingly isolated and as a consequence the one conversation they want to have, where they get to say 'fuck you' in answer to all things, is increasingly a threat.
They don't even pretend their one interest isn't to cause as much harm and damage as they can.
Many years ago, when The Beatles were still a group, I saw a billboard sign advertising a radio station. It showed The Beatles in their three incarnations, Fab Four, Sergeant Pepper era, and the then current Let It Be look. The caption was “If you don’t change with the times, the times change without you”.
I would say that Democrats change with the times and, for Republicans, the times change without them.
Something, something....!!Fox News!!....something, something.
Your immigration poll is pure waste. It tries to tell a story, but doesn't really say anything about immigration. The fact 3 million more illegals reside in America after Donald Trump tells me all you need to know about the issue. Compare that to 1 million in reduction with the Obama era..............
Indeed, Pew Research adjusted for population growth and thus explains the "immigration" mystery. Not a good poll guys. A bunch of newbies in California and New York City don't make a "Democratic or lean Democratic" inclusion. Adjusting for the party nationally reduces this number by 40%.
"what conclusions can we draw"
Democrats like the population growth so far (up to 330 million due to immigration, without it the US would be about 240 million per Pew Research) and are eager to see a nation of half a billion by 2050.
Half a billion??? Not happening. Looks to peak at 350 billion by 2035 and then stagnation.
I suspect that it has something to do with conservative approval of the various policy positions polled. Many of these questions involve policies applicable at both the state and federal level and conservatives are generally happy with the direction that policies are heading either in their own state, or the wins that they have been able to secure via anti-majoritarian mechanisms at the federal level.
Over the last 20 years Republicans have won a series of victories on taxes, even though only one major tax bill passed in that era. Remember the "grand bargain"? That was basically a surrender by the Democrats which allowed the vast majority of the Bush era tax cuts to be made permanent.
On immigration, remember when Ronaldus Maximus signed Simpson-Maxxoli? Oh how far the Republican party has moved on immigration since the 1980's. The same thing can be said about abortion policy: red states have been imposing undue burdens on the right to abortion, and the court has upheld them. Next year the court will declare final victory and overturn the viability standard laid out in Roe.
Republicans are happy with anti-democratic rule, and Democrats are outraged.
*Mazzoli.
Fat fingers.
Lots of Immigration is a bad idea… especially “illegal”. It will wreck civil society because the language and cultural barriers make it impossible to form civil society. There is no reason to think these immigrants are any more tolerant than your average republicans.
As a man, I don’t care about abortion. Nor do I care about who marries whom. I’d repeal the second amendment and am content to see religion flush itself down the toilet with scandal and hypocrisy.
Taxes are wasted on the military so I don’t want to pay more.
The history of immigration and public schools in the US are all that's needed to refute the claim that immigration "will wreck civil society because the language and cultural barriers make it impossible to form civil society." Why do you think that every community in the US has public schools? To form civil society, that's why. Most of the Irish who came to the US during and after the potato famine could barely speak English and had no clue about democracy. By 1900 Irish voters predominated in Chicago, New York, and Boston. And Irish schoolteachers predominated in those cities, too.
And Cubans in Miami? All the Mexicans who instantaneously became US citizens in the mid-19th century? Italians in the late 19th century? Chinese who built the transcontinental railroad?
::rolls eyes::
This is not the 19th century. It is the year 2021 and there is little reason to compare the experiences today with that of 100 or 200 years ago.
So do you not care about rape since you're a man?
Sure... rape is illegal and I agree that it should be illegal. There is no controversy about that.
So you are a Republican. But you don't know it.
Democrats have become much more extreme over the past 20 years in comparison to Republicans.
Is the implication that the GQP, a party of murder fantasies about the First Lady & embrace of antimiscegenation policies at private Christian universities in the Southeast as early as 1999, was already pretty fucking extreme?
My conclusion is ideological partisan sorting (mostly correlating with education attainment) continues apace. Not that long ago there were non-trivial numbers of Republicans who favored abortion rights, say, or who were objectively pro-immigration. Such people have mostly died or moved into the Democratic camp. Same thing in reverse with Democrats, who once were home to large numbers of, say, gun rights enthusiasts, deficit hawks and abortion rights opponents (Zell Miller, Fritz Hollings, Ray Flynn, Sam Nunn, etc). These polls simply reflect that ideological sorting.
This makes me ask: would Michelle Nunn be a Senator from Georgia had she run in the GQP primary?
Republicans radicalized before 2000 and Democrats took 20 years to catch up.
Since the only time you included indies they tracked with Dems I'd say it shows republicans have refused to adapt to modernity.
Which is what conservatives always do.
Conservatives are only good for slowing dowb liberals. Their position has no intrinsic value.
I'd say the main thing to take away is that you can get people to believe anything by framing.
Take immigration for example.
Democrats will tell you how wonderful it is, brings variety, blah blah. But most of them will also subscribe to "white folks should never have colonized the rest of the world". Is immigration different from colonization? Well, sure you can bring up a bunch o f technical differences, but much colonization did in fact take the same "buy land and move on to it" legal niceties form as immigration. All in the framing.
We are seeing the same thing right now around prisons. Ask the median democrat and prisons are awful, sentences are too long, blah blah. But bring up the Bill Cosby verdict and now it's like you've unleashed a Republican asked to comment on the Warren Court.
What I take from this is that Kevin's and my viewpoint (mistake theory, analyze the data, facts first ideology second) is very much a minority opinion. Most people operate on conflict theory, couldn't care less about the facts (cherry pick those that sound good, ignore the rest), care only about framing, and care only about the party line.
Very people are Luria, most are the peasants. And you can't talk Luria-speak to a peasant.
Considering immigration is a capitalism thing, driven by billionaires, your point really doesn't make any sense. Much of the rise in Democrats is a surge in registered Democrats in California and Northeast I-95 areas from Africa and Latin America. That explains how Biden could win by 4.5%, yet barely squeak by in the electoral college in swing states like Trump in 2016.
This distorts the question from the get go and yes, most of these immigrants came during the Bush era, which was mostly run by Republicans. Its a large reason why Brown won by 6.5% in Ohio during the 2018 midterms. Brown the national persona vs. Brown the Ohio candidate campaign in very different ways. Democrats have a long anti-immigrant history, especially from Asia. Least we forget Truman's "slant eyes" comment during the Asiatic liberalization immigration bill of 1951(which interestingly his party bailed him on). Anti-Chinese, Populists/leftist opposition to immigration during the 1890's and 1900's. Republicans only cared about southern/eastern immigration from Europe, mainly because they didn't vote for them in local elections. But man, they loved their Asians especially.
So you're agreeing with me? (It's all tribalism and in the framing, very little of this has to do with independent thought.)
Certainly sounds like it...
You nicely cherry picked your argument.
Is Kevin looking at the same graphs the rest of see here? Because the Same Sex Marriage graph does not show GOP support down 39%-- it shows it at an all time high of 55%. Which is consistent with what I've heard elsewhere, including hand-wringing by those who deplore SSM. The SoCon Right really has lost on this issue big time and even the GOP is starting to abandon them.
Also, the religion graph shows the GOP trend in religion is in slow decline from its high during the Bush years, not "unchanged". (But is that self-claimed religious belief? Church affiliation? Something else? Religion surveys are notorious for vagueness in what they are measuring)
Uh, the point of the post is not "we won", it is "which party has CHANGED its opinion the most over the past generation or so".
The point is that, at least on the selected issues, Democrats have shifted a lot, Republicans not much, except the issue of gay marriage.
You get the same result that other scholars that have looked at the issue have gotten: that, despite the common perception, if you look just at policy preferences (not the "tenor of the debate"/culture war stuff that I'll discuss later), it is Democrats who have become more liberal while Republicans have only slightly moved right.
The danger that Trump posed wasn't primarily a policy-based one (at least not to the extent that, say, a Paul Ryan presidency would have posed), it was a small-d democratic one. He didn't care much about policy details (that's well documented in all the insider accounts), but he deeply cared about appearing dominant and never being perceived as losing. The concept of rules, limits, and accepting competing sources of of authority were anathema, which is a threat to rule of law and liberal democracy. That the GOP went along is deeply terrifying; but it also showed how divorced GOP voters are from non-culture war issues. They cared about "winning"; what they "won" was less important than the fact that liberals were mad about it.
I also feel that this is related to Matthew Ygelsias's "Secret Congress" idea in a way, i.e., there are fewer ideological barriers to cooperation than is widely perceived, but that the partisan barriers are so strong that little can get done out in the open.
This is one of your more baffling posts, if for no reason than your "more liberal/more conservative" comments don't always match up with what the charts show.
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On guns and crime, this story is fascinating.
https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2021/06/29/driver-shoots-kills-armed-motorcyclist-i-35-fort-worth-police/
Gun control is impossible. Police don’t prevent violent crime. Two idiots with guns are emboldened by their ability to threaten others and now… oops. One less loser in the world. It’s kid of a shame they didn’t kill each other. Oh well. I’m guessing the shooter will end up dead sooner or later.
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