Number cruncher: US voters—not so right wing

Have voters in the US veered sharply to the right? The Republicans’ victories in the midterms suggest they have. Not so, according to research by YouGov’s US company. Late in the campaign we repeated a number of questions we first asked in early 2008, as the Obama bandwagon gathered momentum. We also asked the same questions in Britain. Four big conclusions emerge.

The Republicans, Tea party and Fox News have not persuaded more Americans to support right-wing views. Compared with 2008, fewer Americans today reject evolution or believe that abortion should always be illegal. Forty-eight per cent of all Americans want smaller federal government and lower taxes—the same as before. A rise in “smaller government” sentiment that might have been expected given Obama’s policies has not happened.

Rather, the right in America’s politics, media and churches has exploited views already very different from ours. Proportionately, almost twice as many Americans than Britons want smaller government and, despite the progressive shift in US attitudes over the past two years, more than twice as many still oppose abortion and four times as many reject evolution.

In one area, Britain and the US have swapped places. In both countries, fewer people now think that “the world is becoming warmer as a result of human activity.” But the decline since 2008 has been much sharper in Britain, from 55 per cent to 39 per cent, than the US, from 49 per cent to 43 per cent.

Perhaps the most important finding helps explain the unusual bitterness between Republicans and Democrats. Historically, the divides in values and ideology have been wider in Britain. No longer. In Britain, 32 per cent of Tory voters and 21 per cent of Labour voters think the state should be smaller; 20 per cent and 39 per cent respectively think it should be larger. (Most of the rest like the balance as it is.) But in the US, 91 per cent of Republican voters and 15 per cent of Democrat voters plump for a smaller state; 2 per cent and 53 per cent respectively want a bigger one. We have a gap: they have a chasm. Likewise on abortion, climate change and evolution, Republicans and Democrats occupy different planets. In Britain, Tory and Labour voters think much the same. So while our politics are more consensual, and have given us coalition rule, a similar prospect in Washington looks vanishingly small.