America Is (Still) a Conservative Country

While we all sit around pondering the political universe while we’re waiting for Pennsylvania and Georgia and Nevada to announce final results, I would like to post a chart that I’ve posted many times before. It’s from Gallup, and it shows how many people consider themselves liberal vs. conservative:

The good news is that liberals have been making progress over the past few decades. The bad news is that we’re still a small minority. Only about a quarter of the country considers itself liberal, way behind the number who consider themselves conservative. Like it or not, this is the playing field. Here’s a breakdown by demographic group:

There is literally only one demographic group which is more than one-third liberal: people with postgraduate degrees. Every single other group—whether broken down by gender, age, income, race, or region—is well under a third liberal. Even among the youngest voters, only 30 percent consider themselves liberal.

I always hear a bunch of wishful thinking when I post this stuff, but none of it holds water. America is not yet a country that considers itself liberal, or even close to it. This is the underlying foundation of everything. Whatever your strategy for winning more elections, this is where you start from.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

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Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

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