Indies on the issues

I just wrote a post over a Preemptive Karma on the new Pew Research Center's analysis of public opinion trends for 2005. Now I want to look at how Independents came down on the issues.


As you can see, Indies trended somewhere inbetween Dems and GOPers, but closer to the Dems, on Bush's job approval ratings. This particular graph is for November 3-5 of 2005 with 29% of Indies approving and 59% disapproving Bush's job performance to date.


Again we see Indies trending inbetween but closer to the Dems.


Now this one is interesting because it shows both partisan and ideological factors. Not surprisingly, Indies are in the middle as a group. But decidedly closer to conservative to moderate Dems on this issue then to moderate to liberal GOPers. Not sure what to make of that. I just find it interesting.


Indies look to be pretty evenly split on this issue, unlike the apparently partisan views of GOPers and Dems. Still, a solid plurality of Indies believe that the Bush administration deliberately lied about the prewar intel on Iraq.


This one I find very telling. Notice how both the Dems and the GOPers view of the press changes depending on whether it was Clinton or Bush that the press was being critical of. Indies take what I think is a much more realistic view of the press and presidential coverage.

Another one on the press:

Here we see Indies being divided nearly evenly into thirds on the question of the press being too critical or not of Bush. However the largest group said that press coverage was just about right.


Hmmm... nearly evenly split between those who want our troops out (50%) and those who say they should stay (45%). However, if we divide it up into three groups; those who want all our troops out now, those who don't and want no timetable for bringing them out, and those who favor some sort of orderly withdrawal based on a clearly deliniated timetable (whether it starts now or sometime in the future) we see that easily the largest group of Indies (48%) want some sort of timetable for troop withdrawal.

Okay one more. This post is getting too damn long!


Dems are clearly the party deemed most capable of reigning in the deficit. What's interesting is that only 30% of GOPers considered deficit reduction to be a "top priority" as of late October of '05, whereas 49% of Dems did. But back in the 90s it was the reverse of that, with more GOPers rating deficit reduction as a top priority. Of course then we had a Democratic president and now we have a Republican. Coincidence? I doubt it!

Okay, I know I said that was the last one. But, just one more 'cause this one is interesting.


Now compare this one with the last one. In that one we saw largely partisan views by both GOPers and Dems. Here we do too, but check out the huge disparity between how conservative GOPers views deficit reduction and how conservative/moderate Dems do. What makes this more interesting is the fact that fiscal conservatives have historically preferred the GOP while most Dem conservatives have been social conservatives... or so conventional wisdom dictates. But, how then do we explain these numbers if the conventional wisdom is correct?