In their efforts to attract widespread voter support in general elections, parties and their candidates generally want to avoid being perceived as too ideologically extreme. Indeed, a common strategy in U.S. electoral politics is for Republican candidates to try to paint their Democratic opponents as too far left, and Democratic candidates to try to convince voters that their Republican opponents are too far right. Currently, by 49% to 40%, more Americans perceive the Democratic Party as too liberal than say the Republican Party is too conservative, giving the Republicans an advantage in an important election year. With Election Day more than four months away, however, the Democratic Party has an opportunity in the 2010 campaign to try to alter voters' perceptions of the party's ideology.
The Gallup link has the graphs, specific questions asked and the fact that this is a 12 point jump since February 2008 in the number of Americans seeing the Democrats as "too liberal".
Republicans were seen as "too conservative" by 40 percent which has gone down from 43 percent just last year.
Democrats are seen as being "about right" by 38 percent of Americans and Republicans are seen as "about right" by 41 percent.
In the past two years, Americans have become increasingly likely to describe the Democratic Party's views as "too liberal" (49%), and less likely to say its views are "about right" (38%). Americans' views of the Republican Party, on the other hand, have moderated slightly, with a dip in the percentage saying the GOP is too conservative from 43% last year to 40% today, and an increase in the percentage saying it is about right, from 34% to 41%.
With the rise of the Tea Party movement, mostly leaning toward conservative views, Independents now leaning toward Republicans and with 40 percent of Americans self identifying as conservative versus 21 percent self identifying as liberal and 36 percent identifying themselves as moderate, this bodes well for the GOP coming into the November 2010 elections.
Democrats have four months to alter the public's perception, yet there is no evidence that they will try to spend less and limit the Governments role into American's lives, in fact, from the spending and proposals on the table now, they are increasing their liabilities and doing so with no thought to public opinion.
With disaster after disaster hitting the Obama administration, the media and public becoming more and more critical of his handling of issues, his agenda, and his partisan nature, I am not sure altering the public's perception is possible at this point for Democrats as a whole before the November elections.
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