PrintApril 15, 2010
The Battleground Poll and the Hiding Elites
The April 2010 Battleground Poll results have just been released. The poll contains the usual list of topical questions, which ask respondents about which political party they support, what issues are most important to them, what they think of certain political personalities, etc. The answers to these questions matter in the short run, and political junkies pay close attention to these polling results.
There is, however, an old familiar story in the Battleground Poll. This question goes directly to the core beliefs of the respondent, not how politicians, parties, and pundits are spinning the politics of the day. Question D (3) in the Battleground Poll asks what ought to be the most important question about America -- what are the political values of Americans? This is a question almost never asked by polling organizations.
Here is what Question D (3) asks of respondents: "When thinking about politics and government, do you consider yourself to be ... ?" Then the poll gives respondents six possible answers: very conservative, somewhat conservative, moderate, somewhat liberal, very liberal, and unsure/refused. Battleground is a bipartisan poll which prides itself on rigorous and open methodology. It has proven to be one of the most accurate of all polls in predicting the exact percentage of the vote candidates receive in general elections. Battleground lets us see the questions asked, unlike many other polls.
Since June 2002, the Battleground Poll has asked this same question in its demographics section, and in fifteen consecutive polls, the answer has always been the same. Americans overwhelmingly describe themselves as conservative. What does "overwhelming" mean in this context? The percentage of Americans who call themselves conservative in these polls has never been less than 58% (conservative strength was that at its lowest point through these years in December 2007, when "only" 58% of Americans described themselves as conservative.) There has been a remarkable consistency in the responses to this question. Over the course of these polls, 60.2% of Americans, on average, call themselves conservative.
The results of the April 2010 Battleground Poll show that nothing has changed. Fifty-nine percent of Americans in the latest Battleground Poll call themselves conservative; two percent of Americans call themselves moderate; thirty-four percent call themselves liberal; and five percent were either unsure or refused to answer. Remove the "Unsure/Refused," and sixty-two percent of Americans are conservative. Stories from the establishment media, like USA Today and the L.A. Times, conveniently miss the underlying story about the April 2010 Battleground Poll.
The story of conservative predominance is not new; it precedes the Battleground Poll. The Gallup Poll, on February 25, 1973, asked Americans about their ideology. Forty-one percent of Americans were conservative, and only twenty-three percent liberal, and conservatives were easily the largest ideological group. Last year, when Gallup polled ideological identification of every state in the nation, the results were published with the curious title "Conservative Label Prevails in South." Only a careful perusal of the state by state data reveals that conservatives outnumbered liberals in each state in America. Surely "Conservatives Outnumber Liberals in Every State" would have been a more interesting title -- if the mainstream media wanted this story to gain attention.
So why does the media hide this critically important story? It might help conservatives to grasp just how thoroughly a cadre of leftists has captured out institutions. In 2005, a study revealed that seventy-two percent of professors in American universities described themselves as liberal, while only thirteen percent described themselves as conservative. Fred Barnes has noted that journalists overwhelmingly defined themselves as liberal in eleven different surveys on the subject taken since 1962. The media and academia reject what Americans believe. The purpose of those institutions is not to inform or to educate, but to indoctrinate. Those who champion "diversity" most have less intellectual and philosophical diversity in their own hives than any other part of America. The newsroom and the classroom do not look anything like America, which is something the left does not want us to know.
What percentage of America would call itself "liberal" if leftist opinion was not propped up by a near-monopoly in college faculties and in corporate newsrooms? Sixty percent of Americans call themselves conservative despite the fact that conservative opinion and thought are regularly mocked and demonized by news organizations and by Marxist faculties. How many more Americans would call themselves conservatives if it was chic to be conservative -- or at least if being conservative did not automatically also mean being a racist, a homophobe, uneducated, and despicable? That must be the scary part of the left: the sixty percent of Americans who bravely accept the title "conservative" hides a greater conservative majority, including those timid souls who are afraid to say what they believe.
The new Battleground Poll reveals tantalizing questions and answers about how Americans view their servants in the press and education (really, their hiding elites.) Question 36 reveals that 65% of Americans feel that journalism in America is headed in the wrong direction -- 47% of Americans feel this strongly. Question 38 informs us that 73% of Americans feel strongly that journalism is important to democracy. Past Battleground Poll responses have shown the overwhelming conservative majority in America, something ignored by the mainstream media. The April Battleground Poll suggests that Americans are to seriously question this mainstream (and liberal) media. Perhaps the conservative giant in America, so long intimidated and misled, is finally grasping the harm caused to our government with a media utterly subservient to a minority ideology. If this is the case, then news of our hiding elites surely is the new biggest hidden story in politics.
Bruce Walker is the author of two books: Sinisterism: Secular Religion of the Lie, and his recently published book, The Swastika against the Cross: The Nazi War on Christianity.
