Poll: Americans Identifying As Liberal Reaches New High

[DonViejo]

Source: TPM

DANIEL STRAUSS – JANUARY 10, 2014, 10:37 AM EST

The percentage of Americans identifying as liberal ticked up to a new record high, according to a new poll released Friday.

The new Gallup poll found that 23 percent of Americans identify as liberals, the highest number since Gallup started asking the question in its current form in 1992.

That finding is still eclipsed by the percentage of Americans identify as conservative. The Gallup poll also found that 38 percent of Americans identify as conservative, down from in 2010 when 40 percent said they identify as conservative. Thirty-four percent of Americans identify as moderate, the poll also found.

Another recent Gallup report found that in 2013 a record low number of Americans identified as Republicans. The latest Gallup poll surveyed 18,871 adults aged 18 and older. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 1 percent.

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Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/poll-americans-identifying-as-liberal-reaches-new-high

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[truthisfreedom]

1. Progress.

[randome]

11. Slow but sure.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]Rules are made to be broken. Including this one.[/center][/font][hr]

[Stuart G]

2. k & r thanks for posting..... nt

[lunasun]

3. 23 percent of Americans identify as liberals not good plus the MSM has the ability to redefine

liberal all the time

[mountain grammy]

4. I apologize if this sounds snobbish, but in my very humble opinion

a very large number of Americans are too stupid, um, excuse me, ill informed, to know what the fuck they are.

[Greybnk48]

8. I was thinking the same thing.

I would bet many of the "moderates" are de facto liberals. My own sister insists she's a moderate, but has NEVER voted Republican in her 67 years, LOL!

[loudsue]

5. And gallup is known to skew their surveys toward republicans.

There isn't a polling company I know of anymore that actually takes a real, scientific political survey. Most of them are being paid for results.

[oberliner]

6. Still seems like a lot of conservatives

38 percent of Americans identify as conservative - yikes.

[onehandle]

9. But it's a much smaller percentage that skews towards teabaggery.

Most 'conservatives' are just regular people that believe that Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment checks etc are normal parts of the system and not some Communist plot.

There is more purple-blue in the sea of red out there than most people think.

And bad news for teabaggers, the blue out there is just getting bluer.

[oberliner]

10. How confident are you of that?

Have you ever flipped through the RW radio talk shows?

[onehandle]

12. The people who are listening to that are a tiny sliver of that 38%

Most sane people don't want to live in a world of hate 24/7.

Hell, even I turn away from MSNBC when they are ranting about RW ranters. Even second hand with Ed or Rachel joking about it, you can only take so much.

Also, talk radio numbers are shrinking. Left and Right.

The Left just gets tired of it, and the Right is literally dying off.

[oberliner]

14. I sure hope you are right

I'm not sure how tiny the sliver is, considering one could flip from station to station in most markets and have several different talk shows pushing that same Rush Limbaugh-ish message.

It's hard to get a handle on the general population.

[Drunken Irishman]

17. I would say 38% sounds about right.

That's about the floor of Republican support it seems. Even Bush was able to get 38% approval for most his presidency.

[onehandle]

7. Bad news for GOPNRAhadists. nt

[Scuba]

13. I'm more interested in values than labels. I know lots of self-identified "conservatives" ....

... that are adamant about supporting Social Security and Medicare, that are anti-fracking and otherwise pro-environment, that want to see the wealthy taxed at a higher rate, etc., etc., etc.

[Aristus]

15. My wife, who calls herself a conservative,

1. Opposes the death penalty.
2. Opposes the idea that using nuclear weapons against Japan was a good thing, and the only way to end the war in the Pacific.
3. Despised George W. Bush.
4. Has nothing but contempt for Sarah Palin.
5. Supports strong gun-control legislation.
6. Voted for President Obama in 2012.
7. Her favorite President of all time is Jimmy Carter.

Any or all of those things would get her kicked out of every Republican summer camp in the country. But she insists she is a conservative. Years and years of being trained to believe that "Christians vote conservative" have fastened that into her political identity.

Although I would peg her as a right-leaning moderate Democrat, I don't see her adopting the liberal label any time soon...

[Ernest Partridge]

21. Most Americans are (authentic) liberals.

Exactly!

Billions of dollars of right-wing "public relations" (i.e. propaganda) has succeeded in besmirching the label "liberal." (Hell, if you asked me, a life-long liberal, if I was a "liberal" as defined by FOX news, of course I would deny it. But the FOX new caricature is not authentic liberalism).

If, on the other hand, when a fair sample of Americans are polled as to whether they endorse the liberal program (carefully avoiding the "L-Word&quot -- i.e., social security, medicare, anti-war, progressive taxation, unionization, etc. -- "liberalism" wins a majority, hands down.

Same with "Obamacare." Poll Americans as to their opinion of the individual parts of O-Care (without mentioning the "O-Word&quot -- no lifetime limits, no restrictions due to "pre-existing conditions," etc. -- and the majority approves. Yet, as the GOP never fails to tell us, a majority rejects "Obamacare." Similarly, significantly more Americans approve of the Affordable Care Act than approve of Obamacare, unaware that they are identical.

So the news is both good and bad: Bad that so many of our fellow-citizens are ignorant and vulnerable to right-wing propaganda regarding labels such as "liberal" and "Obamacare." Good that the same propaganda has little effect on public opinion regarding specific policies.

[MannyGoldstein]

16. And two-thirds are ACTUAL Liberals, they just don't know it

Polling on any individual Liberal ideal - Medicare for all, raising the minimum wage, etc - shows that 2/3rds of Americans agre with these ideals.

Of course, since 2/3rds is less than a majority, elected Democrats dare not try to pass these programs. But we can dream, no?

[Enthusiast]

22. I was going to say something similar.

Many Americans are liberal but do not recognize it.

[closeupready]

18. Makes sense. The American Revolution ITSELF was Liberalism,

textbook definition - it doesn't get more liberal than what we did in 1776. K&R

[freshwest]

19. Indeed:

[toby jo]

20. The Revolution was fought against the original supply-sider:

a king ( and his court).

A select few who owned and controlled everything.

We've been slowly handing it back to them - the corporate state, the Oligarchy. We better goddamn well be breeding liberals.

[herding cats]

23. I wonder what how the respondents defined liberal and conservative?

They're a hard thing to define in this country at this point in our history. For me the opposite of liberal is totalitarian and the opposite of conservative is progressive. I doubt most of the people polled would agree with my assessment. One thing I'm certain of, the media's common them of liberal being all things not conservative, and vice versa, is overly simplistic and confusing.