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Chicago Studies in American Politics
Neither Liberal nor Conservative: Ideological Innocence in the American Public
Congress is crippled by ideological conflict. The political parties are more polarized today than at any time since the Civil War. Americans disagree, fiercely, about just about everything, from terrorism and national security, to taxes and government spending, to immigration and gay marriage.
Well, American elites disagree fiercely. But average Americans do not. This, at least, was the position staked out by Philip Converse in his famous essay on belief systems, which drew on surveys carried out during the Eisenhower Era to conclude that most Americans were innocent of ideology.
In Neither Liberal nor Conservative, Donald Kinder and Nathan Kalmoe argue that ideological innocence applies nearly as well to the current state of American public opinion. Real liberals and real conservatives are found in impressive numbers only among those who are deeply engaged in political life. The ideological battles between American political elites show up as scattered skirmishes in the general public, if they show up at all. If ideology is out of reach for all but a few who are deeply and seriously engaged in political life, how do Americans decide whom to elect president; whether affirmative action is good or bad?
Kinder and Kalmoe offer a persuasive group-centered answer. Political preferences arise less from ideological differences than from the attachments and antagonisms of group life.
Well, American elites disagree fiercely. But average Americans do not. This, at least, was the position staked out by Philip Converse in his famous essay on belief systems, which drew on surveys carried out during the Eisenhower Era to conclude that most Americans were innocent of ideology.
In Neither Liberal nor Conservative, Donald Kinder and Nathan Kalmoe argue that ideological innocence applies nearly as well to the current state of American public opinion. Real liberals and real conservatives are found in impressive numbers only among those who are deeply engaged in political life. The ideological battles between American political elites show up as scattered skirmishes in the general public, if they show up at all. If ideology is out of reach for all but a few who are deeply and seriously engaged in political life, how do Americans decide whom to elect president; whether affirmative action is good or bad?
Kinder and Kalmoe offer a persuasive group-centered answer. Political preferences arise less from ideological differences than from the attachments and antagonisms of group life.
224 pages, Paperback
Published May 24, 2017
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June 21, 2017
The main thesis of the book is that the American public is non-ideological.
The approach is 100% statistical and is based on data generated by the American National Election Study, the world’s longest-running study of voters and elections.
The findings are as follows:
1. The way these studies measure it (and the detail is provided and seems sensible), barely a smidgen more than one fifth of Americans have ever been “ideologues.”
2. The chances an American will identify with an ideology rise in proportion to one’s ability to answer a series of basic questions about politics.
3. Elites, those who engage deeply and seriously in political life, do identify with ideology, but seem to ignore that the base does not.
4. Ideological consistency across time on specific issues is abysmal.
5. That said, Americans do feel strongly about issues, and particularly so about identity issues, women’s rights issues etc. (and this explains to an outsider like me the quaint ritual incantation of what appear to non-Americans to be uniquely American issues every four years)
6. Conservatives do not feel close to liberals and vice versa.
7. A quarter of Americans, even when pushed, refuse to grade themselves on the spectrum from “liberal” to conservative.
8. The one quarter of Americans who grade themselves as “moderate” on the spectrum from “liberal” to conservative are statistically indistinguishable from Americans who declare themselves as non-ideologues, on every single test the authors have run.
9. Very few Americans consider themselves “very liberal” or “very conservative”
10. Conversely, the distribution from “Democrat” to “Republican” is very uniform.
11. There have consistently through time been more “conservative” than “liberal” Americans
12. Americans are significantly more likely both to identify with a party than with an ideology and to show consistency in party preference across time.
13. Democrats are likely to be liberal and Republicans are likely to be conservative (duh!)
14. Americans who consider themselves to be ideological are slowly dwindling in numbers.
15. Conversely, Americans who identify strongly with a party have been increasing in numbers.
16. Liberals think less of conservatives and vice versa, but no less than fifty years ago.
17. Democrats and Republicans, on the other hand, have been growing apart in how they rate each other over the past fifty years.
18. Consistency between party identification and ideological identification has almost doubled over the past forty years.
19. Americans will change their ideological identification to correspond to their partisanship.
20. Ideology is for Americans the result of experience (for example the emergence of an important politician, the result of a major crisis or a response to social identity) not a cause of participation in political life.
The authors leave things there, but obviously for me this has merely been a starting point for all sorts of thoughts that I summarize here, but which you won’t find in the book and are thus technically not part of the book review:
As a European, raised in a country where I got to experience frequent political demonstrations, tear gas, all-night TV debates, etc. I thought these findings were rather disturbing.
On the other hand, I have always felt that the split between “liberal” and “conservative” in American politics is a very hard-to-swallow “set menu” where neither of the two represents at all how I, for example, think. Somebody please explain to me why I cannot both believe in free markets and in adequate taxation to provide a basic safety net, for example.
So perhaps people are simply refusing to be pigeon-holed into one of those two categories, and would be happier to identify with less proscriptive ideologies.
Also, and again speaking from experience, I find it much easier to express how I feel about issues than to see how my sundry views come together to form a consistent “ideology.”
A less benign interpretation could be that Americans are so busy working to keep their head above water that they do not have the luxury to think along the lines of an ideology. A bit like we observe in today’s nominally communist but practically oligarchic China, it could be that the American worker may only have the bandwidth to concentrate on one or two political issues that are “close to home” and seek to get ahead via partisanship.
The 180 degrees opposite interpretation would be that the subject of serious political debate in the rest of the world, redistribution, is a closed case in the US, where the population has felt affluent enough to put such thoughts to one side, only leaving room for the uniquely American political neuroses we Europeans get to laugh about every four years, such as threats to Roe vs Wade, the composition of the Supreme Court, gun control etc.
But I digress. In summary, much as it cannot be any better than the numbers it’s having to work with, this is a totally fascinating set of statistical findings. I’m very happy I read it. And I can 100% understand that the authors would not want to move from the undisputable econometrics they present to wild speculation of the kind I’m engaging in here!
The approach is 100% statistical and is based on data generated by the American National Election Study, the world’s longest-running study of voters and elections.
The findings are as follows:
1. The way these studies measure it (and the detail is provided and seems sensible), barely a smidgen more than one fifth of Americans have ever been “ideologues.”
2. The chances an American will identify with an ideology rise in proportion to one’s ability to answer a series of basic questions about politics.
3. Elites, those who engage deeply and seriously in political life, do identify with ideology, but seem to ignore that the base does not.
4. Ideological consistency across time on specific issues is abysmal.
5. That said, Americans do feel strongly about issues, and particularly so about identity issues, women’s rights issues etc. (and this explains to an outsider like me the quaint ritual incantation of what appear to non-Americans to be uniquely American issues every four years)
6. Conservatives do not feel close to liberals and vice versa.
7. A quarter of Americans, even when pushed, refuse to grade themselves on the spectrum from “liberal” to conservative.
8. The one quarter of Americans who grade themselves as “moderate” on the spectrum from “liberal” to conservative are statistically indistinguishable from Americans who declare themselves as non-ideologues, on every single test the authors have run.
9. Very few Americans consider themselves “very liberal” or “very conservative”
10. Conversely, the distribution from “Democrat” to “Republican” is very uniform.
11. There have consistently through time been more “conservative” than “liberal” Americans
12. Americans are significantly more likely both to identify with a party than with an ideology and to show consistency in party preference across time.
13. Democrats are likely to be liberal and Republicans are likely to be conservative (duh!)
14. Americans who consider themselves to be ideological are slowly dwindling in numbers.
15. Conversely, Americans who identify strongly with a party have been increasing in numbers.
16. Liberals think less of conservatives and vice versa, but no less than fifty years ago.
17. Democrats and Republicans, on the other hand, have been growing apart in how they rate each other over the past fifty years.
18. Consistency between party identification and ideological identification has almost doubled over the past forty years.
19. Americans will change their ideological identification to correspond to their partisanship.
20. Ideology is for Americans the result of experience (for example the emergence of an important politician, the result of a major crisis or a response to social identity) not a cause of participation in political life.
The authors leave things there, but obviously for me this has merely been a starting point for all sorts of thoughts that I summarize here, but which you won’t find in the book and are thus technically not part of the book review:
As a European, raised in a country where I got to experience frequent political demonstrations, tear gas, all-night TV debates, etc. I thought these findings were rather disturbing.
On the other hand, I have always felt that the split between “liberal” and “conservative” in American politics is a very hard-to-swallow “set menu” where neither of the two represents at all how I, for example, think. Somebody please explain to me why I cannot both believe in free markets and in adequate taxation to provide a basic safety net, for example.
So perhaps people are simply refusing to be pigeon-holed into one of those two categories, and would be happier to identify with less proscriptive ideologies.
Also, and again speaking from experience, I find it much easier to express how I feel about issues than to see how my sundry views come together to form a consistent “ideology.”
A less benign interpretation could be that Americans are so busy working to keep their head above water that they do not have the luxury to think along the lines of an ideology. A bit like we observe in today’s nominally communist but practically oligarchic China, it could be that the American worker may only have the bandwidth to concentrate on one or two political issues that are “close to home” and seek to get ahead via partisanship.
The 180 degrees opposite interpretation would be that the subject of serious political debate in the rest of the world, redistribution, is a closed case in the US, where the population has felt affluent enough to put such thoughts to one side, only leaving room for the uniquely American political neuroses we Europeans get to laugh about every four years, such as threats to Roe vs Wade, the composition of the Supreme Court, gun control etc.
But I digress. In summary, much as it cannot be any better than the numbers it’s having to work with, this is a totally fascinating set of statistical findings. I’m very happy I read it. And I can 100% understand that the authors would not want to move from the undisputable econometrics they present to wild speculation of the kind I’m engaging in here!
April 22, 2018
One of my goals this year is to read a little of the original political science research I’ve seen referenced a lot in op-eds and online discussions. I’m not a political scientist so I can’t judge the research; my rating/comments reflect my experience of reading this academic work as a general reader.
Kinder and Kalmoe’s book was a great place to start my project, as it’s very accessible for the non-experts, with an enjoyable conversational tone. (This clear and fairly non-jargony style should be a model for other researchers who want to reach the wider public). I have zero knowledge of statistical methods so I largely ignored the tables and focused on their discussion.
They are extending the work of a seminal 1960s essay by Philip Converse arguing that few Americans have an ideological identity. Few consistently identify themselves as liberal or conservatives. “Moderate” is not an ideological position but a refusal to choose. Instead, they’re partisan—not because they understand the ideological positions of their party, but usually for reasons of group identity (race, class, gender, religion). Only a small group of well-informed people have consistent and enduring ideological views that provide a framework for their issue positions and voting choices. Most people change their ideological label and issue positions much more easily than their party identification. The argument over whether ideology is the source of voters’ choices and issue positions has, Kinder and Kalmoe say, been going on for a long time, but it isn’t the answer and it’s time for the field to pay more attention to other reasons for how/why people make political choices.
One thing I wondered reading this, and which they don’t address, is whether the accuracy of information matters. If you pay a lot of attention to politics but your information comes from a one-sided and/or frequently inaccurate source how does that affect this? (I suspect it depends on whether your outlet of choice is more partisan or ideological).
I found the book interesting but for non-expert purposes the working out of all the argument details can begin to seem repetitive. If you’re interested in Kinder and Kalmoe’s high-level conclusions, Vox has a pretty good summary: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politi...
Kinder and Kalmoe’s book was a great place to start my project, as it’s very accessible for the non-experts, with an enjoyable conversational tone. (This clear and fairly non-jargony style should be a model for other researchers who want to reach the wider public). I have zero knowledge of statistical methods so I largely ignored the tables and focused on their discussion.
They are extending the work of a seminal 1960s essay by Philip Converse arguing that few Americans have an ideological identity. Few consistently identify themselves as liberal or conservatives. “Moderate” is not an ideological position but a refusal to choose. Instead, they’re partisan—not because they understand the ideological positions of their party, but usually for reasons of group identity (race, class, gender, religion). Only a small group of well-informed people have consistent and enduring ideological views that provide a framework for their issue positions and voting choices. Most people change their ideological label and issue positions much more easily than their party identification. The argument over whether ideology is the source of voters’ choices and issue positions has, Kinder and Kalmoe say, been going on for a long time, but it isn’t the answer and it’s time for the field to pay more attention to other reasons for how/why people make political choices.
One thing I wondered reading this, and which they don’t address, is whether the accuracy of information matters. If you pay a lot of attention to politics but your information comes from a one-sided and/or frequently inaccurate source how does that affect this? (I suspect it depends on whether your outlet of choice is more partisan or ideological).
I found the book interesting but for non-expert purposes the working out of all the argument details can begin to seem repetitive. If you’re interested in Kinder and Kalmoe’s high-level conclusions, Vox has a pretty good summary: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politi...
January 16, 2019
A good re-examination of the role of ideology in the American public a la Converse, and I believe it's fairly convincing. American citizens are, despite increasing partisanship, don't really hold consistent ideologies for the most part, and aren't really vitriolic against people professing the opposing ideology. This stands in contrast to the ideological identification and coherence of political elites. Furthermore, only the well-informed have sorted themselves along ideology-party lines, and people usually adopt their party first and symbolically adopt their ideology second. Kinder and Kalmoe argue against scholars such as Jost, who believe that partisanship and ideology have melded into one construct, by pointing out that most people are ideologically moderate but fall into one of the two major partisan camps. If this is the case, then, what do we make of the work in political psychology that argues for non-political physiological and psychological differences between liberals and conservatives? I think there may still be something to ideology in the mass public, and their argument is not quite convincing enough to completely cast it aside.
Also, I found this book dry as a graduate student studying political science; it is laden with a lot of statistics. This is good for the argument, but presents a potential challenge for people who don't regularly deal in this type of analysis.
Also, I found this book dry as a graduate student studying political science; it is laden with a lot of statistics. This is good for the argument, but presents a potential challenge for people who don't regularly deal in this type of analysis.
January 18, 2026
More and more Americans identify as liberals or conservatives. However, at the same time, many Americans are uninterested in ideology or do not understand it. Does Converse's canonical argument about ideological innocence still hold. This book says yes, Americans remain ideologically innocent -- and it is highly engaging as it does so. Some of my biggest takeaways are: those who are the most ideological are also the most politically knowledgeable. Moreover, 27.5% of Americans do not identify as ideological and of the Americans who do choose an ideology, the most popular response is that they are moderate.
Also, the analysis in Appendix B is really compelling. The authors argue and show that respondents who identify as moderate are indistinguishable from those who choose not to select an ideology.
Also, the analysis in Appendix B is really compelling. The authors argue and show that respondents who identify as moderate are indistinguishable from those who choose not to select an ideology.
January 29, 2021
Super fantastic read, and written so clearly that non-political scientists could easily understand it (not that I'm sure anyone outside of the discipline would be interested in it). The main point of the book is to show that, contrary to the evidence on the political elite, the majority of Americans do not describe themselves in ideological terms. Basically, because of the research on the political elite, we've been grouping ideology and partisanship together as basically synonymous, but this doesn't play out at all in the American public. Among their most interesting findings: identification as ideologically moderate is synonymous with being non-ideological, political sophistication is the biggest predictor of ideological identification, and ideological identification is not influential in vote choices or public policy preferences.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews