Other Columns by Horace Cooper
Horace Cooper Bio

Printer-Friendly Version

If the results of the last two elections weren't sufficient evidence of the shift to the right of the American electorate, a recent report provides more evidence. Last month, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press issued a report entitled "Beyond Red and Blue" which offered startling revelations for progressives and voters left of center about the changed political landscape in the U.S.

First the good news for the left, according to Pew, the base vote for Democrats is 10 percentage points larger than the base vote for Republicans. Now the bad news, Republicans are poised to continue winning elections and will likely consolidate and build on their gains.

Pew's primary conclusion was that "the American political landscape decidedly favored the Republican Party" and that in the 2004 election the GOP "had extensive appeal among a disparate group of voters in the middle of the electorate, drew extraordinary loyalty from its own varied constituencies, and made some inroads among conservative Democrats." Using a nearly 20 year old "typology" to group voters into nine basic voter categories, Pew's latest report demonstrates the gains of the GOP and the concurrent losses for Democrats.

According to Pew, the Democratic Party (made up of liberals, disadvantaged and conservative Democrats) faces "formidable challenges, despite the fact that the public sides with them on many key values and policy questions." Ironically, one huge challenge Pew identifies are "differences over social and personal values among Democrats themselves."

Republicans (identified by Pew as including enterprisers, social and 'government' conservatives) are far more unified and coherent in their beliefs. They almost universally support "a muscular foreign policy" and broadly agree on social issues. The report also notes that Republicans "are distinguished from Democrats by their personal optimism and belief in the power of the individual." Strikingly, the Pew report contends that even low income Republicans "tend to be more hopeful and positive in their outlook than their more fatalistic counterparts in the Democratic Party."

Not so with the Democrats. More united by their opposition to President Bush than their agreement on a general set of ideas, Democrats also enthusiastically oppose the War in Iraq and some "domestic policy proposals from the Bush administration, from tougher bankruptcy laws to private accounts in Social Security." But on a number of issues involving faith and personal values Democrats are unable to reach a consensus.

And the problem is compounded by other changes in the voting patterns of centrists and moderates (called upbeats, disaffected, and bystanders in Pew's report). While former Governor Christine Todd Whitman called the recent filibuster compromise a "triumph of the radical center" the report suggests otherwise. According to Pew, the American center has shifted rightward; in contrast to the 1990s when "groups in the center were not particularly partisan, today they lean decidedly to the GOP."

Upbeats for instance voted four to one for Bush. And the disaffected did almost as well for the GOP.

>> Continued -- Page 1 2