The Conservative Majority and Polls

Gallup on January 8 published a poll that showed that conservatives outnumber liberals in America. The most resilient political fact over the last half-century is the clear majority of Americans who identify themselves as "conservative" rather than "liberal." Even California has a conservative advantage, according to some polls. Even CNN exit polls in the 2018 election all show the same thing. Every single major poll in the last fifty years has shown that conservatives outnumber liberals. What is bizarre about these data is that not only do liberals passionately reject this idea, but so do conservatives, who have become both cynical and depressed and are just as eager to join liberals in rejecting the idea that America is a conservative nation.

The two most conservative presidents of the last century – Calvin Coolidge (Reagan's favorite president) and Ronald Reagan – were enormous electoral successes. Reagan defeated incumbent Jimmy Carter by an overwhelming majority of the popular vote and by carrying 44 states, including all of the ten biggest. When Reagan ran for re-election, he carried 49 states, and a shift of one tenth of one percent would have given Reagan all fifty. Coolidge carried almost twice the popular vote of the Democrat nominee, Davis, and although the Solid South gave Davis about one quarter of the electoral votes, the landslide was still dramatic: Coolidge carried the states outside the South, with more than two-to-one landslides in most states. Had Coolidge run for re-election in 1928, he would have likely won by a margin of the popular vote unequaled in the history of our two-party system. A review of polling data in 2018 shows the same conservative majority. None of the polling organizations is conservative, and all of them are, in fact, pretty clearly hostile to conservatives. CNN did exit polling in the 2018 election, and here are some unexpected findings of the conservative-liberal split in America. Nationally, CNN found that conservatives outnumber liberals by 36% to 27%. Consider the CNN breakdown in states where Republicans lost key Senate races in 2018: Nevada, 35% conservative and 25% liberal; Montana, 42% conservative and 20% liberal; Ohio, 39% conservative and 21% liberal; Arizona, 40% conservative and 22% liberal...and so on. Republicans consistently won fewer votes than the conservative advantage in the state would have provided. Survey USA shows that conservatives nationally outnumber liberals by 26% to 21% in America. This is consistent with state polls, which routinely show conservatives as more potent in states than electoral results would suggest. Indeed, if Republicans won those states and congressional districts in which conservatives outnumbered Democrats, they would have a clear and solid majority in Congress and easy presidential victories. Republicans ought to embrace this and make each race one of conservatives against liberals – but Republicans shy away from this and are encouraged to do so by conservatives who simply do not believe that they are the ideological majority in America. What makes this even more bizarre is that the most prestigious polling organization, Gallup, goes to extraordinary lengths to hide conservative strength. Consider the last Gallup Poll of ideological strength by state. The title is "Conservative Leaning States Drop from 44 to 39," but this excludes 14 states that, according to Gallup, are neither "Conservative" nor "Liberal." What is the bottom line? Thirty-nine states are conservative; nine are liberal; and two states, Delaware and Hawaii, have an equal number of conservatives and liberals. What is the most liberal "state"? Surprise! That "state" is the District of Columbia. This deliberate underplaying and even ignoring the conservative majority in America is something I have been writing about for eleven years at the America Thinker. There is no real explanation for conservative strength except that it is true. Nor is there an explanation for Gallup totally ignoring its own findings ten years ago, which showed that every single state of the nation had conservatives outnumbering liberals. That ought to be a huge news story, but Gallup tacitly ignored its own scoop. Why, then, do conservatives not run America? Begin with the only polity in America that has an overwhelming leftist majority: the federal capital. Then consider the Orwellian monopoly of professors on college campuses. Polls as early as 1962 have shown that only a small percentage of professors are not liberals. The left wins by intimidation and by spiking all information that contradicts its dull, dim catechism. The fact of a resilient conservative majority – a fact produced by news outlets that despise conservatism – ought to give us courage and confidence, but that comes only when we believe in ourselves and the attractiveness of our cause.