John McCain and the Limbaugh Effect
A majority of Americans consider themselves conservative. If only John McCain knew….
In late August I recounted that since early 2002 the Battleground Poll, a bipartisan poll which always asks a core set of questions and which always reveals the battery of questions asked, shows an astounding fact: In answer to Question D3, sixty percent of Americans in twelve consecutive Battleground Polls taken over six and a half years asking virtually the same question each time, call themselves conservatives.
On September 17, a new Battleground Poll asked a new group of Americans Question D3. The result? Fifty nine percent of Americans called themselves conservative. Very recently, on October 6, Battleground released yet another poll asking a large number of questions and, as always, it asked respondents to answer Question D3. Fifty nine percent of Americans in this third Battleground Poll in less than two months called themselves conservative. In the August Battleground Poll, sixty percent of Americans had called themselves conservative.
This is the single most consistent response in any area of any poll over the last decade or so. It ought to be very, very big news. Since early 2002, there have been no less than fifteen Battleground Polls and Question D3 is always asked. If you take all the polls, add the percentages of respondents who call themselves conservative, and divide by the number of polls taken, that percentage is 60%. If you look at the polls over these years individually, the number of Americans in any particular poll who have called themselves conservatives has been as high as 63% in May 2008, and it has been as low as and see the highest percentage of people who call themselves conservative has been as low as 58% in December 2007, but 12 out of the 15 Battleground Polls had the percentage of conservatives at 59%, 60%, or 61%.
But a couple of weeks ago I was having dinner with Daniel Pipes and a group of collegiate conservatives at the University of Tulsa. Professor Pipes asked me a questio