Saturday, July 10, 2010

Majority Of Americans Lean Towards Democrats

There was an interesting article by Z. Byron Wolf from ABC News that discussed the rise of independent candidates in this years elections indicating that a large percentage of the population label themselves as independent, which is what the Tea Party has been touting as their doing, but the article pointed out something even more interesting - people tend to align themselves with one of the two major parties, despite claiming independence.
Larry Sabato, who directs the University of Virginia's Center for Politics and runs the political prognostication website Sabato's Crystal Ball, said the polls showing large numbers of independent voters are just plain wrong.

"It is popular to say that one is independent," said Sabato. "But If you go beneath the surface, you find that those people vote almost identically with people who come right out and say they're either Democrats or Republicans."
Despite figures showing there are more people who identify themselves as Independent then those who identify with either the Republicans or Democrats, when asked political preference, 51 percent of respondents lean towards the Democrats and 43 percent towards Republicans - thirty-nine percent of Americans identify themselves as independent, 24 percent as Republicans, 32 percent as Democrats.  These figures seem to contradict the narrative being pushed by the conservative movement, which claims to represent the majority.

Wolf also points out that for candidates running independently from the two major parties to be successful, they must bridge the gap between the two parties, like what Charlie Crist has done in Florida.

I have noticed that when right-wingers from the fringe visit this site, they tend to make the snap judgement that I am some kind of liberal because of articles such as this one.  They fail to understand the big picture - the GOP should become more moderate, not more conservative.  They have felt it is in their best interests to ignore even more of the electorate, which may work in the short term, but will definitely not help them in the long run - just look at the percentage of young people that align themselves closer to the Democrats.  The Republicans are going to have a rude awakening if they don't change their ways.

3 comments:

  1. Kevin, if McConJob and Mooseolini were the only two Republicans left in the world, they would still claim to be the majority. They're taking a page from history. There were two Russian Revolutions. The first, in 1914, was Socialist. The second, in 1917, was Communist. The party that won the second revolution labeled themselves the Bolsheviks and their opponents the Mensheviks. The word Bolshevik means 'majority', and Menshevik means 'minority'. In fact the opposite was true.

    Here today, the Bushevik party claims to be the majority, but it's not so,

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  2. I had written in the past about the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks before because I thought it related to what is going on now with the Republians. Sometimes I feel like a broken record continually writing about how the Republicans don't represent the majority, but I feel that if I didn't, I would contribute to their lies and allow them continue down the Spiral of Silence...

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  3. Essentially, I want the Republican party to become more moderate.

    I think the Democrats are fine the way they are, although if they were to come a little bit over to the right, I think they would dominate the polls. Republicans have a farther way to go until they hit the center. I think the Tea Party should take all the right wing idiots and teabag Republicans and form their own third party and go the way of other third parties...

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