Republican Conservative Base Shrinks

[RFayette 🇻🇦]

Great news!  Probably not welcome on Atlas, as a more moderate Republican Party would render Landslide Johnson's reporting job obsolete.

Until the Deep South starts voting Democratic, I think he will still have plenty of material, unfortunately.

[RFayette 🇻🇦]

There are a bunch of ways to measure ideology quantitatively, often delivering different results.  DW-Nominate, for instance, doesn't weight social issues heavily, whereas something like OnTheIssues is 50/50.  This obviously affects how we assess whether the Democratic Party has moved to the left (or whether the GOP has moved to the right, though this assertion is generally left uncontested). 

But in both the GOP and the Democratic Party, there is a move to the respective extremes in how ideology is vocalized.  Calling oneself a "socialist" would have been absolutely unacceptable during much of the Cold War and the Democratic Party wouldn't allow it.    Certainly the terminology has changed...

[RFayette 🇻🇦]

There are a bunch of ways to measure ideology quantitatively, often delivering different results.  DW-Nominate, for instance, doesn't weight social issues heavily, whereas something like OnTheIssues is 50/50.  This obviously affects how we assess whether the Democratic Party has moved to the left (or whether the GOP has moved to the right, though this assertion is generally left uncontested). 

But in both the GOP and the Democratic Party, there is a move to the respective extremes in how ideology is vocalized.  Calling oneself a "socialist" would have been absolutely unacceptable during much of the Cold War and the Democratic Party wouldn't allow it.    Certainly the terminology has changed...

It's still not acceptable to call yourself a socialist in the Democratic Party... It's hardly acceptable to call yourself a liberal.

Sanders is well-liked by many Dems....

[RFayette 🇻🇦]

That's honestly surprising. Even more surprising is that a quarter of Republicans have a positive view of socialism.

My mother is a hard-core Republican voter who supports a lot more spending on education, higher taxes, and universal healthcare, but the abortion issue completely rules out voting Dem for her.  I imagine there are other GOPers like that, along with some low-info voters of course.  My father's politics is essentially the inverse.