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 |


