Ok, I thought you were serious before. I think Ideological is worse because I know libs who think they're moderates and moderates who think they're conservative, etc. People don't really get the true definitions, then you add in the somewhats to expand the confusion and it's worse. At least party ID is fairly simple and generally understood.
I'm not trying to prove that weighing by ideology is a good thing, bro. I'm saying it's bad just like party ID is. If Party ID was good, Party ID should shift ideological ID in each election with it yet it doesn't. More or less, the same kind of people are voting in each election. My thesis is that more conservatives didn't vote in 2004 compared to 2008. The same did. The shift came in moderate vote.
Answer me this: why did the ideology ID remain pretty constant in 2004 and 2008 (21-45-34 to 22-44-34) yet party ID shift so much (37-37-26 to 39-32-29)? Wouldn't less Republicans mean less conservatives? Wouldn't more Democrats mean more liberals? It seems pretty unlikely that two election years of exit polls could produce the same two numbers. Not to mention 1996, 1992, and 1988 also came up with similar ideology ID to 2004 and 2008.
If Ideology ID is supposedly more violatile, why does appear to be more constant compared to party ID election-to-election?
