In short, the Right Wing “Kooks” being antagonized by Chris Matthews, et al., is undeserved; rather, the majority of true Kooks–as demonstrated by the statistics herein–are on the other end of the Political Spectrum.
Gallup reported today that 40% of the American population identify themselves as of a conservative ideology. This percentage beat out all other ideologies, as “Moderates” came in second with 36%, and “Liberals” came in 3rd with 21%. This is the first year since 2002 that Conservatives have outpaced Moderates in Gallup’s survey.
A little more interesting is the breakdown of those three ideologies into a more specific camp. Gallup reports the following percentages:
| Ideology | Percentage |
| Very Liberal | 5% |
| Liberal | 16% |
| Moderate | 36% |
| Conservative | 31% |
| Very Conservative | 9% |
| No Opinion | 3% |
(The sample size in Gallup’s survey was 21,905 and they obtained a confidence level of 95% with a Margin of Error of 1%; therefore, we can be very confident in assuming this sample is reflective of the entire United States population)
For the remaining analysis, we will disregard those with No Opinion of their own ideology.
If we assign a numerical value to the ideologies, we can make a quantitative analysis. Therefore, based on the “left-to-right” idea of political ideologies, the following values are assigned (with a true moderate equal to zero):
| Ideology | Value |
| Very Liberal | -2 |
| Liberal | -1 |
| Moderate | 0 |
| Conservative | 1 |
| Very Conservative | 2 |
We may also assume the values (-2, -1, 0, 1, and 2) are mean values of a continuous variable; in other words, a “Moderate’s” range would be from -0.51–.50, a “Very Conservative’s” range would be from 1.51–2.50, etc. (as there are varying degrees of “Conservative,” “Liberal,” and even “Moderate”).
The average political ideology for the entire sample came out to be 0.2371, which is approximately 25% more moderately conservative than it is moderately liberal.
| Ideology | Percentage | Number (% of N) | Value (x) | Weight (n(x)) | ||
| Very Liberal | 5% | 1095 | -2 | -2191 | ||
| Liberal | 16% | 3505 | -1 | -3505 | ||
| Moderate | 36% | 7886 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Conservative | 31% | 6791 | 1 | 6791 | ||
| Very Conservative | 9% | 1971 | 2 | 3943 | ||
| Sum | 21248 | 5038 | Average: | 0.2371 |
From this average, sample size, and value, we can infer a Standard Deviation (σ), which, put simply, is a measure of variance from the population mean (0.2371). The standard deviation for ideology is equal to 1.003. With this standard deviation, we can now analyze a z-score for each group of ideologues. The z-score tells us how far each political ideology is away from population mean. It is calculated by subtracting the mean from x and dividing by the standard deviation. (In a normal distribution, which this sample is, the farther away from the mean one is–the more standard deviations–the less likely he is to occur.)
Based on this formula, the following z-scores were obtained:
| Ideology | z-score |
| Very Liberal | -2.23 |
| Liberal | -1.23 |
| Moderate | -0.24 |
| Conservative | 0.76 |
| Very Conservative | 1.76 |
| Average | 0.2371 |
| Standard Deviation | 1.003 |
Using the continuous variables, the left and right z-scores are:
| Ideology | Left z-score | Right z-score |
| Very Liberal | -2.73 | -1.74 |
| Liberal | -1.74 | -0.73 |
| Moderate | -0.73 | 0.26 |
| Conservative | 0.26 | 1.26 |
| Very Conservative | 1.26 | 2.26 |
In other words, those who are “Very Liberal” are on average 2.23 standard deviations (-2.23*1.003) to the left of the mean (0.2371), and those who are “Very Conservative” are on average 1.76 standard deviations to the right of the mean. Anything more than two standard deviations away from the mean is considered unusual, and is therefore a Kook.
The graph below shows the approximate percentage distribution of the standard deviation. Those within 1 standard deviation from the mean (between -1σ and 1σ; or between z-scores of -1 and 1) make up approximately 68% of the population. For our sample, this would mean that those whose continuous ideology score is between -0.765 and 1.237 make up 68% of the population.
Approximately 95% of the population fall within 2 standard deviations (between -2σ and 2σ; or between z-scores of -2 and 2). For our sample, this would be that 95% of ideologies fall between -1.769 and 2.243. Since the “Very Conservative” value range is from 1.51 to 2.5,This leaves only a range of 0.257 (2.5 – 2.243) unaccounted for by (to the right of) two standard deviations. (Compare the table above, where 26% of “Very Conservatives” have z-scores greater than 2.) This also means that only 2.3% of Americans are very, very conservative (right-wing Kooks) from the population mean (.09 * 0.257=2.3%)
If we apply the same principle to the left, we find that on average, those who identify themselves as “Very Liberal” are further than 2 standard deviations from the average (Kooks). In fact, from the table above, we see that over 73% of those who identify themselves as “Very Liberal” are more than -2σ. This would come out to approximately 3.65% (.73 * .05=3.65%) of the American population being left-wing Kooks (nearly 60% more than than the right-wing Kooks, even though there are 80% more ”Very Conservative” people than there are “Very Liberal” people).
The graphs below show the difference between an expected distribution (with a Political Ideology Score of “0″ being the mean) and the actual distribution (with the calculated percentages based on continuous variable z-scores).
Expected Distribution (with a mean Political Ideology Score of "0")
Actual Distribution of Political Ideologies based on Gallup Poll (with a mean Political Ideology Score of "0.2371").
We can also infer from this the percentage of each partisan ideology who is a Kook, heretofore referred to as “Kookage”. The following table demonstrates the percentage of population for each kook/non-kook ideology, and the kookage of that ideology: (These statistics are also portrayed in the overlapping of “Very Liberal” and “Very Conservative” into the “Liberal Kook Fringe” and “Conservative Kook Fringe” respectively in the graph above.
| Ideology | % of total population | Kookage |
| Liberal Non-Kooks | 17.35% | Liberal Kookage: 17.38% |
| Liberal Kooks | 3.65% | |
| Conservative Non-Kooks | 37.66% | Conservative Kookage: 5.85% |
| Conservative Kooks | 2.34% | |
| Moderates | 36% | Moderate Kookage: 0% |
Percentage of Kooks within each ideology.
As seen by this table and graph, over 17% of liberals are Kooks, while not even 6 % of Conservatives are Kooks. This demonstrates that there are nearly 3 times the amount of liberal Kooks per capita than there are conservative Kooks. So, really, which ideology contains the majority of Kooks?
Perhaps the media should focus less on degrading the “kook-fringe” of the Tea Party movement and focus more on the “kook-fringe” of left-wing socialist movement.
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Raw statistical data obtained from Gallup.com; “Normal Distribution” Graphic obtained from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation; All other graphics, (c) IsThisTheChangeWeNeed.com
The statistical definition of unusualcomes from Mario F. Triola’s Statistics Textbooks.
