[lbo-talk] Political geography ( Was: lbo-talk Digest, Vol 1122, Issue 4)

[Chris Doss]

Well, I can't argue with data. I was thinking of e.g. Catholics who are left on economic issues, but right on issues of abortion and gay marriage, or libertarians who are the opposite. I personally have known many people like this, but again I can't argue with data.
 

----- Original Message ----
From: Matthias Wasser <matthias.wasser at gmail.com>

If you crunch the numbers on the political beliefs of Americans (and,
unsurprisingly, the votes of their representatives) you'll find that >90% of
it can be explained by just two eigenvectors: the left-right spectrum and a
racial politics axis, the second of which has been steadily declining in
importance over time. There may or may not be a good reason for beliefs
about abortion to correspond to those about marginal tax rates to correspond
to those about war, but they do.

So most Americans who pay attention to politics _do_ fall into a left vs.
right dichotomy, albeit not the median voter, who usually applies a
heuristic involving the incumbent party and the unemployment rate.
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