Given the GOP’s eviction into the political wilderness, Republicans must now map a route back to power. To do so, my firm, TargetPoint Consulting, conducted a national post-election survey of 1,024 registered voters, assessing where the electorate stands on those issues most likely to be a part of the Obama administration’s legislative and political agenda.
The survey, which we conducted as an independent research project at our own expense, was fielded November 20-24 via the Internet using YouGov/Polimetrix’s PollingPoint panel, and has a margin of sampling error of +/-3 percent. You’ll find some of our findings below and by following the links provided.
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ARE WE STILL A CENTER-RIGHT NATION?
We sought first to deal with the question of ideology. Does Barack Obama’s election reveal an actual leftward drift in American ideals, or are we still a center-right nation—albeit one that grew weary of Republican representation?
To capture the electorate’s ideological leanings, we asked two questions, one on fiscal issues (e.g., taxes, spending, and balanced budgets) and the other on social issues (e.g., abortion and gay marriage). In this chart, you can see the proportions of overall conservatives, moderates, and liberals, along with the party they most identify with.
While we are in fact a center-right nation, it is too little acknowledged just how large that “center” is. Nearly half (48 percent) of the country are moderates on both fiscal and social issues, or are ideologically conflicted. Another 36 percent are both fiscal and social conservatives, while only 16 percent self-identify as both fiscal and social liberals.
Only 16 percent of those in the center identify as Republican, as opposed to 40 percent Democrat and 44 percent independent. John McCain mustered only 28 percent of the center’s vote—and while it is not necessary that Republicans outright win the center to win elections, at least 38 to 40 percent is necessary to remain competitive.
So while Republicans have a respectable hold on the Right (62 percent of core conservatives identify as Republican, and 89 percent voted for McCain), we are completely adrift in the center. The Grand Old Party has ceded the center—nearly half of this country—to the Democrats, leaving itself a party of only the Right in a center-right nation.
The fix, however, is not necessarily moderation. Indeed, mainstream Republicanism generally aligns with the center-right electorate. Rather, it is probably the tone, tenor, and volume of our messaging that has alienated the center. We should therefore first modernize our message, and only then look at opportunities for moderation with minimal base defection.
WHO REPRESENTS THE MIDDLE CLASS?
Republicans must acknowledge another stark reality of the 2008 election: We have lost the middle-class voter. Not only did we lose their votes, we have lost any meaningful, credible connection we once had with the middle class, effectively relinquishing it to the Democratic party.
We base this upon a series of open-ended questions probing what voters liked most and least about each of the parties. Here’s a word cloud of what people said when asked what they liked best about the Democratic party (the biggest words came up the most). The most frequent words are “middle class,” “help,” “working class,” and “care” (used both in “health care” and that Democrats “care” more about the middle class).
Here is one verbatim response from an independent centrist: “The Democratic Party seems to be interested in helping the middle and lower class people rather than continuing to boost the richer upper class.”
Only one respondent in our sample of over 1,000 mentioned middle-class advocacy in connection with the Republican party.
THE OBAMA AGENDA
There is no better place to reclaim the center-right voter and the middle class than in our response to an ambitious agenda by an extremely popular incoming president. To that end, Republicans can balance the Obama agenda in three ways: by working with him on bipartisan issues, by compromising to make bills better, and by taking bold stands of opposition to beatable bills. The question is, which issues fall into which category?
