One of the oldest and most exhausted memes in American politics is the notion that America is somehow a “centre-right” country. It’s repeated over and over as commentators and analysts attempt to dissect the electorate. On election night as results came in, CNN’s John King told viewers that, “America is a centre-right country, it’s a lot more conservative, especially out in the heartland, than Democrats think.” In 2015, Politico magazine ran an article with the headline: No, America Isn’t moving Left.
A huge reason this narrative keeps getting passed around is because it’s the clear interpretation of the Gallup Political Views poll. Gallup tracks what Americans self identify as and the most recent results, at least at face value, confirm that America is centre-right. 36% percent identify as conservative, 34% identify as moderate while 25% identify as liberal. Based on that, most Americans are either conservative or moderate or some combination. That would indicate that America is in a fact centre-right country. End of story right? Wrong. Although this is based on what people directly self identify as, people often aren’t the best at describing themselves and may not know what those terms mean policy wise. They may think they’re conservative, but they could also be wrong.
To that, let’s look at polling on specific issues and see if America is till a centre-right country.
Healthcare: On the issue of healthcare, the liberal position would be to have a universal healthcare system where the government guarantees healthcare as right. The conservative position would be to not do that and to have a market based system with choice and competition. So what do the American people want? According to a Gallup poll from 2016, 52% of Americans believe it’s the responsibility of the government to provide healthcare to everyone. In another 2016 Gallup poll, 58% of Americans favoured replacing the ACA with a federally funded health service. More recently, a Quinnipiac poll from last month showed that 60% of Americans support expanding Medicare to cover all Americans, creating a universal medicare for all programme.
Taxes: Concerning taxation, the liberal position is that we should have a progressive tax system where those who earn the most should pay more in taxes. Conservatives believe we should either a) have a progressive tax system but one where the top marginal rates for the wealthy are kept low, b) have a flat tax where everyone pays the same rate, or c) abolish the income tax altogether. Bottomline: conservatives believe in reducing taxation, particular for the rich to spur production. According to a 2017 Gallup poll from April, 63% of Americans believe that upper income people pay too little in taxes. 67% believe that corporations pay too little in taxes. Obviously if one thinks that someone pays too little, they think they should be paying more in taxes, i.e. raise taxes on the rich. A Vox poll from last year found that 73% of Americans support raising taxes on the rich.
Education: The progressive position concerning higher education is that we should have tuition free college for university students. The country used to have basically free college and liberals think we should do that again by making college tuition free. The conservative position on this is basically just not doing that. Not hard to find the difference on this one. However, while many argued that Bernie Sanders was “unelectable” due his “far left” positions, often citing his support for tuition free college, a poll from last year actually found that 62% of Americans supported the idea of making college tuition free. Go figure.
Minimum Wage: The liberal position on minimum wage varies, but they all include raising the minimum wage. The level it should raised to varies among people; some say $10, some say $12, some say $15. Bernie Sanders ran on raising the minimum wage to $15 which of course was met with the usual “unrealistic, unelectable” critiques. Conservatives typically argue we should either do nothing about the minimum wage and keep it at current levels or go as far as saying we should get rid of it all together. The logic behind this is that if you raise the cost of labour on employers, the quantity demanded will drop, costing jobs. And yet, according to a YouGov poll, 66% support raising the minimum wage to $10, 59% support raising it to $12, and even 48% supported raising it to $15. However, in terms of how the minimum wage is set, which is ultimately more important, a University of Maryland poll found that 63% of Americans believe it should be tied to inflation which would contain built in raises based on inflation. That would automatically put it closer to $15 even if you initially passed a $10 bill but then tied it to inflation.
The Environment: This one is pretty straight forward. Liberals believe in protecting the environment and helping preserve it by enacting policies designed to curb the effects of climate change. This includes a number of proposals such as a carbon tax, switching to renewable energy etc. Conservatives on the other hand, while not opposed to protecting the environment, believe that any policies about the environment, should place economic growth first. Fortunately, there is a Gallup poll that asks this exact question, whether environmental protection should be given priority even at the risk of curbing economic growth, or if economic growth should be given priority even if the environment suffers a bit. Overall, 56% of Americans think the environment should be given priority while just 35% said economic growth. Also in the poll, 59% said the government is doing too little to protect the environment and 69% support more strongly enforcing environmental regulations.
So across the board, Americans heavily give liberal answers to policy questions. 60% of Americans support medicare for all. 63% of Americans want the minimum wage tied to inflation. 63% of Americans want to tax the rich more. 59% want the government to do more to protect the environment. 62% of Americans favour making college tuition free. So while more Americans may identify as conservative or moderate, interestingly enough, when you ask them about specific policies, they heavily give liberal progressive answers. Thus, this notion that America is somehow a “centre-right” country would appear to be wildly inaccurate.
–M
The Max Blog 