Nonsense polling
A recent Gallup poll on political ideology was a great example of how bizarre the analysis of American ideologies is. The poll indicated (according to the pollsters) that conservatives were the largest ideological group in America right now. What it actually shows is that when given the artificial choice of “conservative,” “moderate,” and “liberal,” the greatest number (40%) chose “conservative.”
That doesn’t really tell me much.
First, how does someone like me (a libertarian who rejects the initiation of force in all facets of life) choose a point along a simple one-dimensional continuum that has at one end “conservative” (someone who tends to reject the initiation of force in markets but embraces it in social and foreign affairs) and at the other end “liberal” (someone who tends to reject force initiation in social affairs and certain foreign matters but embraces such coercion in the markets)? In my experience, many people who are much closer to being libertarian end up selecting “conservative” when given such limited options (possibly because they place more weight on the economic side of things).
And what does “moderate” even mean? Maybe that could be a libertarian, but maybe it could be someone who prefers a ‘moderate’ amount of coercion in all aspects of society, thus not fitting ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’ categories. Or it could be a pure authoritarian or populist who prefers massive coercion in all areas. Or maybe it’s one of those individuals who, lacking any sort of internally consistent moral foundation, likes to “judge each issue independently” to decide how much they want to initiate force against their fellow man. The fact is that all these different people would have some reason to choose “moderate” on the nonsensical “conservative-liberal” continuum.
A pretty accurate way to determine ideology is to think about it as a two-dimensional space with one axis for economic issues and one axis for personal/social issues. The World’s Smallest Political Quiz uses this method. You could also construct a three-dimensional space, with the third axis being for how strongly you support military force to solve problems.
I get the sense that libertarians (again, those who oppose coercing their fellow man in any realm of society) are a growing segment of the ideological space in the U.S. It would be nice to see a major polling organization include that category in these kinds of polls. Otherwise, they’re really just publishing nonsense.
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