Two interesting articles in Newsweek:  Jon Meacham writes that “America remains a center-right nation,” and Jonathan Alter replies that “we’re heading left once again.” Here’s Meacham:

So are we a centrist country, or a right-of-center one? I think the latter, because the mean to which most Americans revert tends to be more conservative than liberal. . . . nearly twice as many people call themselves conservatives as liberals (40 percent to 20 percent), and Republicans have dominated presidential politics—in many ways the most personal, visceral vote we cast—for 40 years. Since 1968, Democrats have won only three of 10 general elections (1976, 1992 and 1996). . . . In California, at least one poll suggests that social conservatives may pass an anti-gay-marriage ballot proposition next month . . .

And here’s Alter:

Jon Meacham is right that by the standards of a European-style welfare state, we will always be a relatively conservative country. But closer to home, the norm has not been consistently conservative over the course of the 20th century. If anything, the nation was more often center-left. Democrats controlled the House of Representatives—the “People’s House”—for six straight decades between 1930 and 1994 (with only a short exception). While many were Southern conservatives on race, the huge chunks of progressive legislation they swallowed over many years could choke an elephant. . . .

A methodological comment

And now here’s me. Before getting to the data on voters’ ideologies, let me make a brief methodological comment. Meacham’s point that Republicans have been winning presidential elections is relevant; in fact, before 1994 there was an ongoing discussion within political science as to how the Republicans were consistently winning the presidency while being in the minority in party identification and congressional voting. (From 1994-2004, the two parties split the congressional vote roughly evenly. From 1950-1992 and again in 2006 (and probably in 2008 as well), it’s been a pretty consistent 55% for Dems and 45% for Reps. See the lower graph at this link.) So, yes. But Meacham’s comparison is misleading in that he’s treating the election outcomes as yes/no measures of public opinion. But surely if the essentially-tied 1968, 1976, and 2000 elections tell us anything about public opinion, it is that it was evenly divided in these years, not that America was left or right. Counting the winner is a common mistake people make in studying elections. Yes, for policy concerns it is the winner that matters more than the vote margin, but for studying public opinion it is a different story.

A more important point, though, which both Meacham and Alter raise in different ways, is that ideology is relative to current standards; given that the parties can shift positions (if only gradually at times), it is no surprise that they find themselves not too far from current voters. For example, is it really a sign of conservatism that 50% of Californians think gay marriage is OK? Similarly, if Obama raises the tax rate on the top bracket to 40%, would this really represent a triumph of liberalism? The center has moved a lot, in different ways, over the past few decades.

And now for some data

From Michael Herron and Joe Bafumi (and in chapter 8 of our book), here are estimates of the distributions of voters, House members, and senators on a common scale:

House members and senators’ positions are estimated based on their votes in Congress. Voters’ positions are estimated based on some survey questions where people were asked their views on a number of issues that had also been voted on in Congress. As you can see, elected representatives are generally more extreme than voters. (See here for versions of the above graph broken down by red, purple, and blue states.)

In light of recent American politics, this pattern makes sense: congressmembers generally vote with their parties, very few conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans remain in the House or the Senate, and, as Delia and I have shown, voters’ positions on issues are much more of a mixed bag. Voters may be to the left of the Democratic party or to the right of the Republican party on specific issues, but, on the whole, most voters don’t have that sort of ideological consistency.

More data on voters’ ideologies, this time in comparison to how they perceive Bush and Kerry, is in chapter 9 of our book, originally from my paper with Jeff Cai. Here’s the graph showing how a random sample of a thousand or so Americans in October, 2004, perceived Bush, Kerry, and themselves on a set of economic and social issues (i.e., respondents were asked about particular issues, not about general “liberal” or “conservative” labels):

There was a lot of spread; on average, though, voters saw themselves as between the two candidates. (See the graph on the right, in which K and B represent respondents’ average assessments of where Bush and Kerry stood on these issues.)

At the beginning of the year I had an exchange with an economist who interpreted the polls to say that American opinion is to the left of the middle of the Democratic party. His point was that, although Americans are much more likely to label themselves as conservative than liberal, but they are more liberal when you look at particular issues such as health insurance and whether the rich pay too little in taxes. When you look at a large basket of issues, however, you find the voters to be between the two parties, as is indicated in our graphs above.

Voters and nonvoters

Finally, we should distinguish between political positions of voters and of Americans in general. As Nagler and Leighley have discussed, nonvoters differ systematically from voters:

The ideological distribution of voters and non-voters in 2004 is fairly similar to that in 1972: moderates are most under-represented, while conservatives are over-represented. Importantly, the magnitude of these differences increases between 1972 and 2004. . . . these differences on class-based issues are enduring and increasing.

For the question, What should President Obama (or McCain) do?, the opinions of nonvoters aren’t so relevant. But for statements about America, compared to other countries with higher voter turnout, it’s worth keeping these differences in mind.

In conclusion

Both Meacham and Alter have useful perspectives on recent American political history, and the data we’ve looked at don’t directly address the “center-right” vs. “center-left” controversy: these terms only make sense when compared to some contemporary standard. But the evidence, both from elections and from polls, supports the commonsensical idea that the two major parties are far enough apart that, at least in the short term, voters can move policy as far as they want to the left or to the right by consistently voting for Democrats or Republicans. Either party, when elected, has to balance its policy goals with its desire not to move too far away from the center.

That said, the success of an administrative policy depends on more than where it stands on a left-right scale. For example, when it came to implementing conservative policies, Reagan had more success with tax cuts than with budget cuts.