We all use the terms liberal and conservative, left and right, or blue or red, pretty indiscriminately. It’s understandable since these are convenient tags, and everyone else uses them. But like I’ve said elsewhere, I think this spectrum is too simplistic.

If you open the Word document below you’ll see some charts that measure people’s ideology (Liberal, Moderate, Conservative) and their party identification (Democrat, Independent, Republican).

There’s a chart for the US as a whole, and then charts for two red states, Indiana and Texas, and for two blue states, New York and Oregon.

Ideology and Partisanship in the US and Selected States, 2004

First, note that across the US and in these four states, the largest group is moderate. In fact, this is the trend across the world. Most people plant themselves in the middle. Whatever their views, people don’t like to think of themselves as extremist.

Second, you’d expect that the column of liberals would also be largely Democrat; and the column of conservatives largely Republican. But there are a lot of liberals who identify as Independents, and there’s a surprising number of conservatives who are Democrat.

Third, there are more conservatives and Republicans than liberals and Democrats in red states, and vice-versa for blue states. But what’s surprising is how many Democrats there are in Texas across the ideological spectrum. Or look at Oregon–a lot more people there think of themselves as moderate than in fellow blue state New York, and there are Republicans across the ideological spectrum.

In short, we can’t be sure that self-identified conservatives are also Republicans (only 22% of Americans said that in 2004); we can’t assume a Democrat is a liberal (just 11%). And we certainly can’t say most people in blue states like New York are liberal Democrats (only 15% there say that) and most people in red Indiana are conservative Republicans (just 23%).

If I haven’t bored you yet with these numbers, you might try an online survey that will give you a more complicated version of your political position. Political Compass, out of Britain, is very interesting, as is the US-based Politopia. Both surveys don’t take more than 15 minutes, and they will give a great deal of food for thought.