The Politico Poll and conservative strength
By Bruce Walker
web posted May 26, 2014
Politico has just come out with a new poll and the results in many ways are encouraging for Republicans. The population sample was from competitive House districts and competitive Senate races, so these poll results are particularly important in terms of winning congressional races in both houses of Congress which are legitimately in play.
Voters are more likely to vote for Republican candidates than Democrat candidates; those voters who strongly support on party over the other also favor Republicans; and voters who are enthusiastic about voting also favor Republicans. If this pattern in swing districts and states continues through to November, Republicans will not only capture the Senate comfortably but also gain a significant number of House seats as well.
What ought to interest conservatives about these poll results, however, are the ideological demographics. Polling organizations – every polling organization, whatever its political predisposition –show that conservatives outnumber liberals. Gallup, for example, has conducted a state-by-state poll of ideological sentiments for several years now. These polls all show that in almost single state there are more self-identified conservatives than liberals. Some years, in fact, Gallup reports that in every single state there are more conservatives than liberals.
The Battleground Poll also routinely shows that not only do conservatives outnumber liberals in America but that conservatives are the solid majority in America, greater in number than liberals, moderates, and those who did not respond to the question. Some conservatives, almost perversely, believe that the Battleground Poll, which is a bipartisan poll sponsored by George Washington University, and the Gallup Poll, which is about as "establishment" as a polling organization can be, is trying to lull conservatives into a false sense of confidence.
The new Politico Poll provides the same picture of America as every other polling organization has given us for the last several decades: conservatives dramatically outnumber liberals in America. Question 42 of this latest poll asks respondents to identify themselves ideologically. Here are the results to that question: liberal 17%, moderate 41%, conservative 41% and declined 2%. So far the results look like what Gallup reports nationally – a lot more conservatives than liberals, but moderates still are decisively.
The Politico Poll, however, drills down deeper in Question 43, which asks those respondents who called themselves "moderate" to say which way they leaned ideologically. That would be roughly comparable to the Battleground Poll questions which provide "strongly conservative," "moderately conservative," "strongly liberal," and "moderately liberal." Out of the 41% of respondents who called themselves "moderate," here is the breakdown on how these respondents said that they leaned: liberal 25%, moderate 40%, and conservative 35%.
Multiply the 41% of respondents who in Question 42 called themselves "moderate" by the internal breakdown by self-identification of moderates in Question 43, and there is the percentage of all respondents: 10.25% of all respondents are liberal-leaning moderates, 16.4% of all respondents are moderates who do not lean towards conservative or liberal, and 14.35% of all respondents are conservative-leaning moderates.
When the ideological leanings of moderates are added to the ideological breakdowns in Question 42, conservatives are the overwhelming majority of the total respondent population. The percentages, rounded off, reveal: 27% of all respondents in this poll called themselves liberal" or "liberal-leaning," 16% of all respondents in this poll called themselves "moderate" or "moderate-leaning," and 55% of all respondents in this Politico Poll called themselves "conservative" or "conservative-leaning."
These numbers are remarkably close to the responses in Question D4 in twenty separate Battleground Polls over the last twelve years. The Battleground Poll provides options in that question so that respondents can call themselves "very conservative," "somewhat conservative," "very liberal," and "somewhat liberal" similar to the "conservative" and "conservative-leaning." The April 2014 Battleground Poll showed that 56% conservative of Americans define themselves as conservative and 41% either liberal or moderate.
This ought to be good news but many conservatives simply refuse to accept the clear fact that conservatives clearly outnumber liberals in America, a fact which shows up in virtually every poll by every polling organization. The leftist infestation of the conveyor belts of opinion, entertainment, education and communication in our society so warp our perception of America that even conservatives believe the skewed view presented by the media and the rest of the leftist establishment. When conservatives accept that lie, the left wins by default. 
Bruce Walker is the author of book Poor Lenin's Almanac: Perverse Leftists Proverbs for Modern Life and a contributing editor to Enter Stage Right.