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"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."
Sir Winston Churchill

11.12.2006

Republicans Need To Look at the Numbers Before Deciding to Abandon Conservatives Again

Here are some numbers you may have seen from this week's exit polls regarding ideological self-identification:

Moderates - 47%
Conservatives - 32%
Liberals - 21%

This is virtually identical to the 2004 numbers, with moderates increasing by 2% and conservatives shrinking by 2%.

So Republicans should forget those nasty conservatives and get squishy, right?

Wrong.

Moderates in 2006 broke:

58% Democrat
38% Republican

That's a huge Dem advantage of 20 pts, right?

The problem is that parties tend to attract moderates at the expense of the base.

This is less of a problem for Dems moving right because the number of self-identified liberals is so small (1/5th of the electorate). It's a bigger problem for Republicans because the conservative share is much bigger (1/3rd).

Moreover, liberals tend to be very reliable Dem voters and conservatives very reliable GOP voters.

Given an 11-pt self-identification conservative advantage, this means that even when moderates break 20+ pts for Democrats, Republicans still net out more votes by capturing 29% more of the conservative vote than Democrats do (47% moderates in electorate & 20% moderate-Dem advantage = 9.4% electoral advantage / 32% conservatives in electorate = 29% conservative - Republican advantage needed to counter). Another way of saying this is that the GOP needs 71% or better of the conservative vote to counter moderates breaking Dem at 58-38% as they did in this election.

What's more attainable for Republicans---locking down 71% or better of the conservative vote or getting the squishy moderate vote to something substantially better than 50/50 in the GOP's favor?

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