Looks like it falls to me to point out that the the subject header is inconsistent with the story, Americans becoming more conservative doesn't equate with them moving to the right, as the subject header asserts.
In fact the survey results don't even mean that the American population on the whole is becoming more conservative, it only indicates that individual Americans believe they are becoming more conservative.
Hardly a revelation. Individuals usually do become more conservative as they get older, its a biological imperative. When we are young, we are open to new ideas a lot more, because we know nothing and have no ideas, we are a blank sheet. Then we learn and develop opinions about things, which means we are slightly less open to new ideas, because we have already formed opinions. As we get older, our brains become less agile and its harder to understand new ideas.
Which is to say, more conservative.
But then we die. And are replaced by younger people, with different ideas.
So this survey is utterly meaningless. Not least because it is purely subjective. It just means that individuals consider themselves more conservative than when they were younger.
I consider myself more conservative than I was 20 years ago. Its subjective of course, but I consider that being a socialist is quite a conservative political stand. Not radical in the least.
So I wouldn't read much into this survey, its a statement of the bloody obvious.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas
At 10:53 AM -0400 6/7/09, Doug Henwood wrote:
><http://www.gallup.com/poll/121403/Special-Report-Ideologically-Moving.aspx>
>
>July 6, 2009
>
>Special Report: Ideologically, Where Is the U.S. Moving?
>Nearly 4 in 10 Americans say their views have grown more conservative
>
>by Lydia Saad
>
>PRINCETON, NJ -- Despite the results of the 2008 presidential
>election, Americans, by a 2-to-1 margin, say their political views
>in recent years have become more conservative rather than more
>liberal, 39% to 18%, with 42% saying they have not changed. While
>independents and Democrats most often say their views haven't
>changed, more members of all three major partisan groups indicate
>that their views have shifted to the right rather than to the left.
>
>...
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