Voters use left and right political labels as mental shortcuts, not strict policy matches. This mismatch was especially common among people who identified as right-leaning. The data showed that 43% of self-identified right-leaning voters actually supported mostly left-leaning policies.
Voters use left and right political labels as mental shortcuts, not strict policy matches
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**Voters use left and right political labels as mental shortcuts, not strict policy matches**
A new study suggests that voters use political labels like “left” and “right” as mental shortcuts to guess a politician’s policy stances, even when the voters’ own political identities do not strictly match their actual policy preferences. These findings indicate that while ideological labels help voters navigate elections, they often function in a minimal way rather than as a perfect reflection of policy alignment. The research was published in the journal [*Public Opinion Quarterly*](https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfag015).
The researchers found that a large portion of the electorate does not hold policy preferences that perfectly match their ideological self-placement. This mismatch was especially common among people who identified as right-leaning. The data showed that forty-three percent of self-identified right-leaning voters actually supported mostly left-leaning policies.
“We were surprised by the finding that, among a large share of voters, especially those on the right, policy positions are not consistent with ideological self-placement,” Treger said. “Specifically, right-wing identifiers support many policies that are more left-leaning on the policy issues we examined. This may mean that right-wing voters use the right label more symbolically than in policy terms, and more so than left-wing identifiers.”
https://academic.oup.com/poq/advance-article/doi/10.1093/poq/nfag015/8554342
This is research conducted on Canadan voters as an FYI.
It’s why republicans in Congress are so hell bent on dismantling education and gerrymandering the hell out of voter maps.
They’ll lose elections if the people realize they don’t actually support them.
The whole “left v right” conceptualization is the product of an accident of history in the French parliament (National Assembly) and yet it has become ubiquitous in US political discourse. It does far more to create false dichotomies and and confuse issues than it does to help us make sense of things, unfortunately.
In fairness, it would be exhausting to sift through every single policy and platform thing for every candidate. Party affiliation already shows most of what someone is about.
There is a reason that far-right politics busies itself with misinformation to steer people away from voting for parties that actually want what they want, instead of convincing voters on policy.
Its party loyalty and tribalism. Its never about policy.
It will blow the minds of most Americans that even ultra conservatives in Italy support universal healthcare.
I get a chuckle that the study was done in Canada, but the graphic is clearly American, in most Westminster parliamentary governments, Blue is associated with right wing/conservative policy, and red is associated with Liberal or left policy.
Now for the actual content, I see this regularly in healthcare in Canada, people who vote Conservative because they live in areas that are traditionally more conservative, but if you ask about actual policy they care about, they like public healthcare, they like public funded education but they can’t reconcile that taxes pay for it and want lower taxes and more police which overlap with right leaning conservative views.
its no secret i lean strongly left. yet even for primaries; i study each name on the ballot regardless of party. i go on each campaign site; what are they campaigning for or against, whats their field of expertise; if they already served how did the vote and how did they do
That is our responsibility as voters
It’s the “mostly” part that they are tripping over. Not all beliefs are held equally. If a core two or three beliefs generally align with either party, then that is where party allegiance will generally be placed regardless of other beliefs that that have lower priority. This is not an academically rigorous statement, just one that I have observed over 30 years or so of watching people I know. Personally I don’t trust either to watch out for what’s important to me, but thats my own pessimism.
My own personal experience:
I can walk my father through the entire concept of why capitalism is killing us, and he will nod and agree every step of the way until the very final “so we should move away from capitalism to a more people-centric model” and it’s like he’s Patrick Star because despite agreeing with EVERY concept leading up to it, it becomes “but then that’s socialism and that’s bad for us.”
He will understand and agree right up to the point that he needs to finally let the red hat go and then he will not cross that stupid line. It is infuriating.
Well right leaning only really means that at your core you still are conservative. I mean there are stances that i take that are viewed as liberal. However depending on the issue i could go right on it. However, since i have a strong family core and hold traditional values over newer ones, Conservative is where i am. I’m certainly not progressive.
About 15 years ago I remember hearing the same thing in reverse. I hate labels, first because they keep changing and are often inaccurate, and second because they appeal to mental laziness and unnecessary divisiveness. Responses also vary hugely on how questions are phrased, so the surveys can be misleading as well.
This is why American conservatives historically despise “Obama-care” but love the Affordable Care Act… They’re the same thing except “Obama-care” is a manufactured buzzword just to make white racists vote against their own interests. Again.
Ive seen right wingers watching left leaning shows and agreeing with their policies. Like living wages/unionization, universal healthcare, etc. Once they see (D) next to someones name or hear Socialism, they flip and say all that stuff is bad
its all about framing.
Right, they support left-leaning policies, and then vote for right-leaning candidates because “that’s who they are”. Politics for many is about voting the same as your parents, not thinking about what you’re doing.
Maybe because nowadays, people vote for the least repulsive instead of the most engaging?
Like, “free healthcare, unions and women rights are nice, but grown men in my daughter’s bathroom is just a giant NO” is probably a very common reasoning.
it’s pretty obvious when you accept how stupid people are
From what I read in the article, it did not sound like they incorporated how strongly the participants felt about each issue. If someone feels extremely strongly about the abortion issue, for example, and fairly lukewarm about the others, it is not necessarily a kind of “uninformed” decision for them to vote for the party that agrees with them about abortion, but not he majority of the others. That is why “wedge issues” are emphasized so much at times.
Here in the US we see that The Right fully supports social welfare programs under the explicit condition that they* don’t also get them.
*Whomever they have been told is the Boogeyman this week.
This research is flawed because the supposed disconnect comes from economic policy, noting that right-leaning voters “*supported increasing the deficit to spend more on social services.*”
Right-leaning politicians haven’t even paid lip service to fiscal responsibility in a long time, and haven’t implemented policies to reduce deficit spending for much longer than that. That’s not a “mismatch.” That’s taking conservative economic philosophy from forty years ago and applying it to modern right-leaning politics. We’ve known for quite some time that right-leaning voters shifted toward populism decades ago.
But they vote for republicans. In other words they have no idea what’s going on and don’t have a strong sense of their own ideas and principles.
Responding yes or no to ideas you like you don’t like is very different than being able to articulate those ideas without prompting
Ah yes that explains why 43% of self-identified right-leaning voters vote for left-leaning politicians.
I am incredibly left leaning and Canadian, anecdotally I have talked with many “convoyers” and many who consider themselves very conservative. It astounds me that when we discuss policy many both agree and even support similar policy if framed correctly, however they immediately think that the Conservatives also share those values when they often are often fundamentally at odds with those values.
It’s because left is about policies, and right is about religion, even though the policies of the left follow their religion more. But the right has convinced them that the right is actually based on religion.
The issue is valiance, or importance, of a given issue in decision making. Voters have to prioritize a series of views that tend to be extreme and heterodox to the political parties.
The result is political parties fight over what the problems are, not what the solutions are.
How many times have comedians done that bit where they say Trump is going to do “insert liberal economic policy” and they’re excited about it, but no it was actually a Democrat-led initiative?
They want many of the same things as the rest of us, but with the freedom to use slurs without losing their job and friends.
Lefties should just run as Republicans.
So it is a “Both sides” argument.
Probably because those who label themselves as right-wing are doing so based on either performative gender norms (liberals is sissies!!) or cultural indoctrination.
They choose their political alignment before they understand the policies or platform it represents, if they ever do which is rare.
A lot of the right is just people who can’t accept legal abortion, one issue voters. I am not encouraging abortion, but it is legal and some people have bad circumstances, not my personal business. People make choices I might not every day, should I judge them all because I am special?
“Left”, “Right” and “Center” are very broad strokes to describe people and the policies they believe in. No one is only one thing.
I assumed this when I was younger and saw the evangelical community rally around abortion as a “litmus test” for who to vote for in the 80’s and 90’s. At least now we have research demonstrating it.
People will happily identify as single issue voters. Meaning they probably agree more with the side they are voting against.