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There's definitely a political direction in the US, something hard-leftists don't get. Here's a set of fun polls:
All three links try to answer the painful question of: "How do American voters line up on ideologies?" Gallop finds that America as a whole identifies more Conservative (36%) than Liberal (24%), with another whole 36% saying they are neither Liberal NOR Conservative. The Other Side is divided up into 20% Very Conservative, 49% Conservative, 27% Moderate, and a tiny sliver of Liberal or Very Liberal Republicans (that surprises me all by itself! Where do they find these people?!). We here on the Left count 16% as Very Liberal, 31% as Liberal, and a whopping 45% as Moderate (and another 5% as Conservatives, but we know we have those). Unfortunately, we have to deal with the fact that we live in a country where 7 out of every 20 people say they are neither Left NOR Right and view both parties from a 'pox on both' perspective. At least they're moving to our side because Fascism Bad, amirite? :)
Gallop points out that even as people become more self-identified as liberal on social issues (33% Liberal, 32% Moderate, 32% Conservative), they remain very moderate to conservative on economic issues (23% Liberal, 35% Moderate, 39% Conservative). That's why Liberals have to focus on social issues because economic issues don't favour them. 69% of voters in the Democratic Party agree on liberal approaches to social issues, while only 49% favour a conservative approach.
But above all, the most interesting one is the YouGov poll. When people were asked about how their politics was described, 21% said "Moderate" described them well, and another 33% said it described them partially. Conservative got 28% and 25% on the same areas. Progressive only scored 18% and 24% in those areas, and Liberal scored 16% and 24%. Socialist? 7+21%. Left Wing? 11+16%. But they went further. They asked which terms used to describe the respondants, and which terms never described them. Socialist and Left-Wing shared a stat line on that response -- 51% of people said these terms NEVER described them, while another 6% said the terms used to describe them. Only Radical (64%) and Anarchist (67%) scored harder on the 'I have never been this).
I'm not sure I agree with the notion that today's Democrats are Reagan's Republicans, but as long as you keep in mind that you live in a country that over half of people polled vehemently disagreed with being labelled socialist or left-wing, and tailor your solutions to account for that, while trying to do the best to represent Progressive or Liberal goals, I won't complain hard about whether or not 2024 Dems would be at home in the 1980 RNC.
The issue with all of those polls is that the average American has been lied to about the definition of communism, socialism, fascism, etc. for decades. So unless the polls avoid using the terms directly and instead describe what they are referring to, the poll is effectively useless for these kinds of metrics.
Just look at the people that vehemently hate Obamacare, but will defend the Affordable Care Act. It's literally the same thing, but propaganda makes people think that they're not only different things, but have dramatically different thoughts about the same thing just depending on what it's called.
Fair point! Still, let's be careful with dismissing these polls. If someone can tar your policy with labels like Liberal, Socialist, or Leftist, it can turn a lot of Americans off.
Welcome to the Republican platform for the last 30+ years. They're been calling everything under the sun Communist, Socialist, and Fascist specifically so people no longer know what those words mean. Combine that with reducing both federal and state education spending whenever possible and vilifying upper education as some sort of liberal conspiracy/propaganda machine, and you're just about caught up.