"The Republican Problem With Independent Voters"

[applegrove]

The Republican Problem With Independent Voters

by Paul Waldman at Prospect.org

http://prospect.org/article/republican-problem-independent-voters

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On economic issues, independents are closer to Democrats than they are to Republicans.

As I've discussed before, there are moral judgments liberals and conservatives make about things like economics that not only underlie the positions they take on policy, but also make most of the empirical conversation we have about those issues kind of superfluous. We spend a lot of time marshalling facts to support positions that have a moral basis, when those facts have virtually no chance of persuading large segments of the population. For example, you can tell many conservatives that income mobility in the United States is lower than that in many countries, and it won't dent their belief that in this land of opportunity, everyone gets what they deserve and your wealth is a clear indicator of your virtue.

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Not surprisingly, there's a dramatic difference between what Republicans and Democrats believe on these questions. There's a difference, though not as large, between what people at different incomes believe. (I would have loved to see the answers broken out simultaneously by income and party, to see whether middle- and low-income Republicans are any different from high-income Republicans. Unfortunately, the sample size probably isn't big enough, and they lump together everyone with an income above $75,000 a year.) But as striking as the differences between Democrats and Republicans are, what should worry Republicans in these results is the distance between themselves and independents.




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[Cha]

1. yeah, I can't imagine any Indies would

like what the teabaggers are selling unless they're Indie teabaggers.

thanks applegrove~