The John Locke Foundation’s Agenda 2004 poll is out and the results are fascinating, illuminating, and all over the map.
The poll had Bush ahead of Kerry, Burr and Bowles tied, and Easley ahead of Ballantine. It showed increasing anger about state taxes and diverting highway funds to non-highway uses – causes typically associated with right-of-center folks – but also increasing support for targeted economic incentives and increasing opposition to school choice. The complexities continue.
But there is one unmistakable trend across the years that we have conducted the Agenda poll. Since introducing a bare-bones question in 1998 on political philosophy, we have found a steady increase in the percentage of North Carolina likely voters who identify themselves as “conservative.”
In 1998, 41 percent of respondents were moderate, 35 percent conservative, and 18 percent liberal. In 2000, it broke down as 44 percent moderate, 38 percent conservative, and 13 percent liberal. In 2002, moderates and conservatives were tied at 39 percent, with liberals at 20 percent. Now, in 2004, conservatives have broken out of the pack at 45 percent, leaving moderates at 37 percent and liberals at 13 percent.
What’s going on here? Obviously, poll numbers bounce around. Just look at the presidential horserace. Remember, also, that these are just snapshots of moving targets. We aren’t asking the same people the same question over six years. We are getting a different sample, slightly more or less Democratic, slightly more or less male or white, etc. Finally, these are self-imposed labels. Our poll question does not define the terms. It is up to voters to interpret these political labels as they will and affix them accordingly.
Still, I think it would be difficult if not impossible to spin the trend into insignificance. A fair reading, it seems to me, is at least that North Carolinians have increasingly becoming comfortable with the label “conservative” to describe their political leanings. Perhaps this reflects the continued influx of immigrants into our state from frostier climes where conservatism has not borne quite the racially tingled connotation that it once did in North Carolina. Perhaps the growth of conservative talk radio, Internet sites, and organizations such as our own John Locke Foundation have helped to create a more congenial atmosphere for conservatives in the electorate – if not actually expanded the universe of such conservatives through news, analysis, commentary, and public-policy debate. (I would actually prefer to own the label “liberal,” as in classical liberal, but have pretty much bowed to the will of the majority, perhaps to my shame.)
One piece of evidence, though its statistical significance is iffy, is that in the Agenda 2004 poll younger people were more likely to identify as conservative (including 51 percent of those 18 to 25 and 52 percent of those 26 to 40) than were Baby Boomers (about 40 percent) and elderly voters (46 percent). I’d guess these younger conservatives are newly minted as well as newly arrived.
Just because the philosophical inclinations are shifting a bit doesn’t mean that there are any necessary political or policy outcomes. Most but not all conservatives said they opposed tax increases and supported school choice. Most but not all liberals said the reverse. The trend is food for thought, though, don’t you think?
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.