Chart of the Day

I found this at Ezra's place and it shows that we're getting more liberal. It's interesting how reliably this tracks the prevailing course of domestic policy. During the Eisenhower years, support for liberalism gradually rose. Then it fairly steadily fell throughout the 60s and 70s as the domestic policy climate kept moving to the left. Naturally, with support for liberalism incredibly low around 1980, Ronald Reagan was able to sweep into office. His conservative tendencies rebuilt support for liberalism, which then didn't change very much during the 1988-2000 period when most all big proposals died of gridlock, and the Bush years have led to a massive increase in public support for liberalism.

Of course, to make any sense of this chart you have to understand it as measuring a relative quantity. It's clearly not the case that voters were "more conservative" in 1984 than in 1964 in the sense that 1984 voters wanted to return to the 1964 policy status quo of no Medicare, no Medicaid, no EPA, no Voting Rights Act, no federal funding of education, etc.

Of course, maybe the methodology's all wrong. The chart's put together by Professor James Stimson at UNC and I haven't actually gone back and checked his data or his methods, so caveat emptor.

Comments

The vertical axis is "Liberalism"; in my mind that implies old fashioned (classical) non-governmental-interventionist (social and economic) policies -- emphasizing voter rationality. Looked at in that vein -- the chart isn't so surprising, i.e., isn't this a proxy for satisfaction in government?

Posted by mike c | August 31, 2007 8:58 AM

in my mind that implies old fashioned (classical) non-governmental-interventionist (social and economic) policies -- emphasizing voter rationality. Looked at in that vein -- the chart isn't so surprising, i.e., isn't this a proxy for satisfaction in government?

I thought the bozos considered Reagan the apotheosis of classical liberalism. According to that chart, he got elected by an electorate soured on classical liberalism. A little counter-intuitive, if you know what I mean.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | August 31, 2007 9:28 AM

Does this basically say that Americans slowly adopt the opposite ideology of whatever's dominant in their political elite?

Posted by Andrew Edwards | August 31, 2007 9:57 AM

This looks to be related: http://polmeth.wustl.edu/tpm/tpm_v12_n1.pdf
but the chart on page 10 looks much different.

Also, Liberalism never seems to be defined.

Posted by Skullberg | August 31, 2007 10:09 AM

Not certain I understand your comment... look at the chart again for the last 30ish years.. rising quickly in the 80s post-Carter&Nixon Liberal (not Liberalism -- yes Nixon's government was HIGHLY interventionist -- wage & price controls being one biggie) disasters. Stalled early 90s near the highs of the time series and then fast rise through 2004 (TS ends there before wide disgust with bush/iraq etc.). The rhetoric (if not the reality) was smaller, less socially & economically activist government. The reality, of course, was explosive growth in spending and regulation. The chart represents, as I understand it, meta-analysis of various surveys of issues.

Posted by mike c | August 31, 2007 10:10 AM

Assuming that the chart is meaningful and that it's basic thesis is accurate, I'd say that the simplest interpretation is that both liberalism and conservatism are easier to support as ideologies than as practices.

I think that actually makes a grim sort of sense. It's always easier to say how things should be done and to complain about how they are being done than it is to actually do them.

Whenever ideology encounters reality, ideology tends to get a beating.

Posted by Andrew Lias | August 31, 2007 11:13 AM

What seems really strange here is the disconnect with polling data on voter self-identification. If at all times during this period over half those polled approved of "liberalism," then how come consistently fewer voters identify themselves as "liberal" than as "moderate" or "conservative"?
I can't make too much sense of the underlying data [available on Stimson's web site], but he seems to be constructing this index from a number of issue polls--and we know that even when R-Squared was at his most popular, his views were far from those of the electorate as measured by issue polls. That being the case, I think it's dangerous to make too much of this data; plainly, lots of people with "liberal" views as defined externally by some professorial indexer don't think of themselves as liberal or vote liberal. The chief use of this data lies in what it shows about trends, and that's truly heartening.

Posted by David | August 31, 2007 12:19 PM

What seems really strange here is the disconnect with polling data on voter self-identification. If at all times during this period over half those polled approved of "liberalism," then how come consistently fewer voters identify themselves as "liberal" than as "moderate" or "conservative"?
I can't make too much sense of the underlying data [available on Stimson's web site], but he seems to be constructing this index from a number of issue polls--and we know that even when R-Squared was at his most popular, his views were far from those of the electorate as measured by issue polls. That being the case, I think it's dangerous to make too much of this data; plainly, lots of people with "liberal" views as defined externally by some professorial indexer don't think of themselves as liberal or vote liberal. The chief use of this data lies in what it shows about trends, and that's truly heartening.

Posted by David | August 31, 2007 12:20 PM

I think somebody made up some numbers, graphed them, and sat back to see if any damn fool talked about them.

Posted by Njorl | August 31, 2007 3:01 PM

So, in 1984, the year that Ronald Reagan was re-elected with 59% of the vote, the political mood was really 59% liberal?

Huh?

More explanation is needed of whatever the left axis is supposed to be.

I assume the bosses like you to blog fast, but I think this one misses the quantity-quality optimum.

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 31, 2007 3:46 PM