More fun with poll numbers

A recent Pew Center poll has been making the rounds of the blogosphere, and it does have some interesting things. What Left Blogovia is chattering about is that (self-identified) Republicans have told Pew’s pollsters that they think Sen. Clinton is very “liberal”, more so than the other Democratic candidates, and—get this—nearly as far “left” as her husband, Our Previous President. I see why they think this, but of course there is no sensible understanding of liberal or left that supports this. In fact, the only way that this makes sense is if liberal doesn’t mean anything in itself, but is defined only by the attitudes of those who call themselves Conservative. That is, if the more somebody is reviled by the Right, the further Left they are, then clearly the Senator is way out there on the fringe. It’s also possible, you know, to define these things in terms of actual policy positions, or even in terms of how those who call themselves liberal view the candidates (which takes into account attitudes and priorities, which are important—Sen. Lieberman holds many, many fine liberal positions, all of which he considers of lower priority than ... whatever the hell he thinks he’s doing), and by those, the Junior from New York is well toward the right of the Party.

There are other things. Democrats who were surveyed report themselves to average a 4 (on a one-to-six scale, more on this later), and consider their main candidates in a tight cluster from 3.9 to 4.2 (oddly, Senator Clinton is to the left here, too). Republicans average themselves out to a 2.6, and consider their main candidates ranging from 2.8 to 3.2, a tightish cluster to their left. This goes along with my general impression, that although most Democrats would like better candidates, they don’t feel that the ones they have are ideologically deficient. Well, not in a general way. Republicans, on the other hand, appear to noise about that the problem with their field is that it is insuffienciently conservative, rather than being a bunch of weirdos. I have no idea if any of this is true, by the way, but it is my impression.

I keep coming back, though, to the question: If "6" represents someone who is very liberal in politics and "1" represents someone who is very conservative, where on this scale of 6 to 1 would you rate the following people? Six to one? That would mean that a six and a one are equivalents on either side, a five and a two, and a three and a four. There’s no way to put anybody in as a dead centrist. Democrats put themselves just slightly left of center, and Republicans a full point right of center. Nobody is considered more than a point and a half away. On average.

And what do I think of averages?

Now, eight percent of respondents said that they thought Our Only President was a six, that is, very liberal. Twenty-six percent had him on the liberal side. This isn’t a fluke—nine percent said that they thought Our Previous President was a one, very conservative, and twenty-seven had him on the conservative side. Twenty-eight percent consider Hilary Clinton a conservative (three or less), thirty-one percent for Barack Obama, and thirty-four percent for John Edwards. They haven’t yet released the breakdowns, that is, whether those numbers came from self-identified Republicans or Democrats or what. Still, I think it’s clear that we’ve learned that either (a) a lot of people failed to understand the question, or (2) people just like to give pollsters the piss. But that won’t show up in the average.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.