Centerfield

It looks to me like 47% of the country would instantaneously describe themselves as either strongly liberal (9% liberal Indy, 11% liberal Dem) or strongly conservative (9% conservative Indy, 18% conserv Repub) and thus likely be unpersuadable to a non-ideological cause or candidate in a moderately polar political race. Thus 53% (for MOE sake, let's say 40%) is persuadable to the right cause or candidate. That's a sizeable chunk of America.

I would argue that there are at least two major strains of moderates ... those that just simply don't like to take sides for reasons of temperment or lack of thoughtfulness ... and those that truly have cross-pressured ideologies.

Those that fall into the former will likely be late-deciders and wait for candidates to speak to them. Those in the latter will seek to make a home in either party. That's the only way to make real effective change - to MAKE a home. There's no invite list for these things.

Those who play politics within the 40 yard lines have to be aggressive in carving out their political identity and agenda, otherwise, you're just left to pick between two sides that you did nothing to help create. You're only as homeless as you choose to be.

Of course, I don't pretend to speak for the full 15% of my little faction of the world.

What do the categories liberal/republican and conservative/democrat actually mean in terms of the data?

For example does liberal/republican mean "I'm a liberal and I vote republican" or does itmean "I'm liberal for a republican?" Does conservative/democrat mean "I'm conservative and vote for democrats" or "I'm conservative for a democrat?"

I'm hesitiant to read too much into this data without understanding the reasoning of these self-identifiers. If they mean the latter interpretations, that suggests the possibility of even more moderates. If it's the former, then the lib/GOP probably corresponds to libertarians and the con/dem to socially/religiously conservative social justice activists, at a pure guess.

The about.com article sources data from the Pew Foundation. I've played around with the Pew data myself, and they ask the questions about liberal/conservative and Democrat/Republican separately.

Therefore, the 2% who report liberal Republican are not "liberal for a Republican" but are answering "liberal" and answering "Republican" to separate questions. I don't know who those people are. My guess is that the liberals who are Republicans and the conservatives who are Democrats are mostly over 40.

Since repeated studies have suggested that a substantial proportion of the American people self-identify as moderate regardless of their actual positions on specific issues I'm not sure that any meaning whatsoever can be derived from these statistics.

Dave,

I don't know about these studies. Do you have any links you could post?

Dave, thanks for pointing that out. I wondered about that myself, and it's also my impression, although I don't have studies on it. People don't like to think of themselves as extremists, as un-balanced, as biased, as not especially fair-minded, as unreasonable.

I don't entirely discount the numbers, but you have to be careful with self-identification data. With politicians, it's important to pay attention to what they do, not just what they say, and with studies on the GP, you'd want to do something similar, by checking the samples answers to the general ID questions against what the postions they agree with on issues questions.

Hey Rick...

Where did you place me on your chart?

Carla,

I know you call yourself a liberal, but are you a Democrat?