WaPo:
James Stimson knows as much about public opinion as anyone in America. He has been tracking the nation’s policy preferences for more than 20 years using a “policy mood” index derived from responses to a wide variety of opinion surveys involving hundreds of specific policy questions on topics ranging from taxes and spending to environmental regulation to gun control.
The latest update of Stimson’s policy mood series suggests that the American public in 2012 was more conservative than at any point since 1952. (Actually, since mood in each year is estimated with some error, it seems safer to say that the current level of conservatism roughly equals the previous highs recorded in 1980 and 1952.) While the slight increase in conservatism from 2011 to 2012 is too small to be significant, it continues a marked trend that began as soon as Barack Obama moved into the White House.
Conservative Policy Mood, 1952-2012
(Graph by Larry Bartels)Stimson ’s book, Public Opinion in America: Moods, Cycles, and Swings, provides a detailed description and discussion of his approach. (Stimson tracks liberal policy mood, but I have reversed his index in order to highlight the striking current level of conservatism.) Measuring public opinion by tracking common trends in a wide variety of specific policy questions is a marked improvement over the more usual approach of simply asking people to identify themselves as conservatives or liberals. Many people don’t think in such abstract ideological terms, and even those who do sometimes use the conventional labels in unconventional ways.
Unfortunately the Republican leadership is not, which means that these greater numbers of conservatives have little representation in Congress.