Here's what CNN found in the 2010 House exit poll, when respondents were asked for their ideology, note the number in brackets which indicates the proportion of the respondents who picked that option:



Liberal (20%)

D - 90%

R - 8%

Other - 2% Moderate (38%)

D - 55%

R - 42%

Other - 3% Conservative (42%)

D - 13%

R - 84%

Other - 3%



So liberals made up 20% of the actual 2010 electorate, and vote 90% for the Democrats.

Here's 2006, the previous mid-term:

Liberal (20%)

D - 87%

R - 11%

Other - 2% Moderate (47%)

D - 60%

R - 38%

Other - 2% Conservative (32%)

D - 20%

R - 78%

Other - 2%



Once again, liberals made up 20% of the electorate, but only voted 87% for Democrats. Between 2006 and 2010, liberals made up the same proportion of the electorate, and yet actually voted even more strongly Democratic in 2010 than their historical norm. This is remarkable given that 2006 was actually a Democratic wave, and 2010 a Republican one - and 2010 actually had higher overall turnout, 41% versus 36% in 2006. It's not even that the same liberals from 2006 showed up, but in fact some new ones came out too. But they weren't enough.

If you insist on using 2008 as the baseline (debatable since it was a Presidential election), then you'd find that liberals were 22% of the electorate and voted 87% Democratic. So there were a few more liberals, but they were slightly less Democratic. Probably a wash. Even if you want to say this cost the House D's 1-2% of popular vote (a real stretch), you'd still need to account for the other 7-8% of popular vote they lost between 2008 and 2010. That would ignore the problems of comparing Presidential to off years, where some of the more liberal groups like the young are just historically less likely to vote anyway.

Wherein is this great liberal(/progressive) sulkfest in lieu of voting? Liberals voted. They voted for Democrats. I don't know how many held their noses while doing so, but they damn well did so, at least according to the most reliable evidence we have of such things.

Exit polls are complex, and there's lots of moving parts, between various groups showing up in different numbers, and actual people changing their minds, ideologies, or party affiliations. Not to mention new voters appear, some die off, everyone else ages, there is no picture perfect apples to apples comparison of one election to the next.

Still the claim that petulant liberals punished Obama to their own detriment is repeated so often with such certitude, I thought I would request to see the proof of it, because I don't see it, in the most obvious place it would appear if it were there, the proportion and voting of actual liberals in comparable elections. If you have some more complex explanation of how it really happened, I would like to see it, because all I see is the proportion of the voting population calling themselves "conservatives" grew tremendously at expense of those calling themselves "moderates." Either a bunch of moderates became conservatives, or moderates stayed home, or a lot of conservatives who usually stay home came out. Or some combination of those things. Yet any of those explanations would be tremendously at odds with the "blame the progressives" explanation.

So what am I missing, or am I missing nothing, and this is just becomming that rarest of creatures, a "zombie lie" of the left?

