progressive majority
Media Matters and Campaign for America’s Future have released a report on American political attitudes: “The Progressive Majority: Why a Conservative America is a Myth.” The full report is here (686KB PDF), and shows that:
Media perceptions and past Republican electoral successes notwithstanding, Americans are progressive across a wide range of controversial issues, and they’re growing more progressive all the time. […] …the movement of public opinion, particularly on social issues, seems to be in one direction: to the left. O pinion on issues such as homosexuality and the role of women has grown steadily more progressive for the last few decades, while it is difficult to find an issue on which the public is more conservative now than it was 20 years ago. [emphasis added]
On general opinions about the role of government to specific economic issues (trade, taxes, unions, raising the minimum wage), liberal opinions predominate. Social issues (primarily abortion and gay rights) are often considered automatic wins for the Right, but this report shows otherwise:
The conventional wisdom poses a traditionalist “heartland,” where “mainstream” Americans reside, against a modernist, secular, liberal coastal elite out of touch with the beliefs of the real America.
Domestic issues such as gun control, energy policy, immigration, and health care follow the same general trend. The report’s conclusion looks at the disparity between Americans’ liberal attitudes and our reluctance to use the label “liberal” to identify those attitudes:
the term “liberal” has been victim of a relentless conservative marketing campaign that has succeeded at vilifying liberals and liberalism. The consequence is that only strong liberals are willing to identify as such. But many people who hold liberal issue positions call themselves moderates, or even conservatives.
CAF’s research director Eric Lotke suggests at TomPaine that, given the number of issues on which the broader public support the Left/liberal position, “It’s time for mainstream media to question whether movement conservatives, not coastal liberals, are out of the mainstream.”