It's not always about left-right-center

Some thoughts on the shortcomings of how we think about ideology

It has become evident that the prevailing way of thinking about political ideology doesn’t do a very good of explaining the earthquake that has shaken our politics. Maybe it’s time to think outside the box — literally.

The development of a 2x2 political ideology matrix
Since the beginning of the systematic study of American public opinion, the dominant analytical framework placed voters and politicians on a left/liberal to right/conservative continuum. In the New Deal era the terms referred to views on the role of the federal government in the economy — a more robust role favored by liberals and a limited role the position of conservatives.

In the 1950s and ‘60s, with the blossoming of the civil rights movement and the Warren court decisions on race and other cultural/social issues — school prayer, crime, contraception, and so forth, it became evident to analysts that the role-of-government-in-the-economy dimension was insufficient. Court decisions on busing in the late-‘60s and abortion in the early-‘70s reinforced the point.

Scholars and many journalists adopted a two-dimensional model, with one axis representing a left to right position on government’s role and the other for social and cultural issues. As everyone knows, the “liberal” view was designated as more government in the economy and an expansion of rights (for women, blacks, gays, people accused of crime, etc.) on the social side, with conservatives associated with less government and relatively restrictive views on reproductive rights, the rights of the accused, gay rights, etc.

This two dimensional way of thinking lent itself to a neat and tidy 2x2 box that could place a person based on their general perspective on those two dimensions. In 2016 Vox reporter Alvin Chang wrote about a Vote Compass survey that would reveal a person’s ideology vis-a-vis that year’s candidates — Jill Stein (Green Party), Gary Johnson (Libertarian), Trump, and Clinton. Here’s an example of what it looked like.

This two-dimensional model remains the dominant paradigm used both in scholarly circles and in the real world of politics. The current discussion about the two parties typically focuses on whether or not parties need to moderate their positions, with the understanding explicit or otherwise that we’re talking about either social issues, the role of government in the economy, or both. Everything is left-right-center, and it’s always on these terms.

But how much does that 2x2 box actually explain? In fact many voters don’t think along liberal versus conservative lines. Is it useful to impose the 2x2 box on a populace that in many cases is ignorant of it?

Maybe yes. But with the rise of populism in both parties — especially on the Republican side — and the overall distrust of democratic institutions, it has become clearer and clearer that something is missing, that “liberal” and “conservative” don’t explain some key things that are going on.

Simon, Kemp, and Perot — a little backstory
I first got to thinking about the possible shortcomings of the 2x2 model way back in the fall of 1987. A baseball coach and Army Air Corps WWII veteran of my acquaintance — we’ll call him “Fred” — was opining on the developing field of candidates for the 1988 primaries. He expressed the view that his favorites were Paul Simon (the Democratic senator from Illinois, not the rock star) and Republican congressman Jack Kemp. This was perplexing: using the prevailing method of analysis these guys were polar opposites — Simon a down-the-line liberal (save for an obsession with balanced budgets), more liberal than almost anyone running, and Kemp was a hard core conservative on taxes and abortion who was considered on the far right. How could anyone like these two the best?

It might have been easy for a budding “sophisticate” to attribute Fred’s preferences to ignorance, but he was intelligent (if a bit off-beat), and he certainly followed politics. So what was he thinking?

I don’t recall asking him to elaborate and he’s long since passed away, but maybe what he liked were that these two candidates didn’t fit the politician mold. Simon was liberal, but he was hardly typical — no evident charisma at all — and there was that confounding view that government should live within its means. And Kemp, for all his Reagan-style conservatism was laser-focused on public policy solutions that would provide opportunities for black America. These two were, in short, different and potential agents of change if you were disgruntled with the Bushes and Doles and Dukakises and Bidens (yup, he was a candidate then) who dominated the landscape in those days.

Moving ahead, there was the curious candidacy of Ross Perot in 1992. The Texas businessman spent millions on 30-minute informercials explaining that there was something fundamentally wrong with how the economy and the federal budget were being handled. He depicted a nation on the road to ruin if it didn’t try another path. And that spring, as it became clear that Bill Clinton and GHW Bush would be the major party nominees, Perot was competitive and even ahead in some polls. Ultimately, after some eccentric moments (dropping out of the race for no apparent reason, then re-entering shortly thereafter), Perot received 19% of the vote in November. Clinton won the popular vote 43-38 over Bush and took the electoral college by a good margin.

The conventional wisdom was that Perot was taking most of his votes from Bush, who had won handily in 1988. After all, while he was hard to pin down on social issues, he was certainly not a liberal, and, moreover, most analysts at the time assumed it was impossible for a liberal Democrat to get a majority — that only a split GOP could result in a Democratic victory.

Actually there was little or no evidence to support the idea that most Perot voters would have voted for Bush had Perot not run. It seemed, if anything, that those voters — at least the ones who wouldn’t sit out the election — would have split their votes more or less evenly between the major party candidates.

But more to the point: what exactly was Perot’s appeal? He advocating making government leaner by tackling entitlements, a conservative stance, but he wanted no part of social issues. He just wanted to “get under the hood” and fix the economy. His was, in short, a non- or post-ideological appeal: “Something needs to change and I’m the straight-talking guy who can make it happen.”

Perplexing politics in this century
This century has seen other outcomes that don’t fit the left-center-right paradigm. Here’s a sample:

1. Rural white Obama voters from 2008 and 2012 turning by the thousands to Trump in 2016. Hard to explain.

2. Bernie bros voting for Trump — 10% or so flipped in 2016. And the New York Times recognized the phenomenon again this year.

3. The progressive iconoclast John Fetterman cruising to victory for a Pennsylvania Senate seat in 2022, while establishment incumbent moderate Bob Casey was beaten two years later. Conventional analysis would have expected the opposite to happen.

4. Moderate Michelle Nunn, the accomplished daughter of the iconic Georgia senator Sam Nunn (a defense hawk and a social conservative) falling on her face in a 2014 run for her father’s seat, while just a few years later the arch-liberal Stacey Abrams barely lost in her statewide race. Again, flying in the face of the conventional wisdom informed by the 2x2 box. (The Democratic establishment was thrilled to get Nunn to run — less so with Abrams.)

5. RFK, Jr, a lifelong Democrat with a record of progressive environmentalism and liberalism on reproductive rights, embraced by Trump and maybe about to run the second biggest department of government under him. It’s also interesting that Trump’s lead staffers feared Kennedy staying in the race for president as their polls showed he would take more votes from Trump than from Biden or Harris in key battleground states.

6. The popularity of Liz Cheney among liberals who disagree with her on virtually every issue. Cheney’s voting record in the House on both economic and social questions was extremely conservative.

7. Marcy Kaptur’s ability to win a Trump congressional district in Ohio (Trump won it by 7 points) over a well-funded challenger despite a mainstream liberal voting record. What did she represent that Harris couldn’t replicate?

8. And what was it about labor union leader Dan Osborn (he ran as an independent although he probably received Democratic backing) that enabled him to make his race against incumbent Republican Deborah Fischer competitive — he lost by 7 points — when recent statewide races in Nebraska have favored GOP candidates by more than 20 points? His policy stances were mostly down-the-line liberal.

Rod Serling told us there was another dimension
Lurking out there have always been more dimensions in politics than the two in the matrix. The academic literature, particularly in Europe, goes in all sorts of directions on this topic. Perhaps most relevant to our situation is a globalist-nationalist dimension posited by Electoral Calculus in the U.K. The Brexit debate 8-10 years ago brought front and center a crosscutting cleavage in politics there between the anti-Brexit forces, aka the globalists, and the Brexiteers, or the nationalists.

Catie Edmondson in an October 2024 NYTimes article provided some insight on what might be going on outside-the-2x2-box here in the U.S. It’s worth an extended quote from her coverage of progressive Ruben Gallego’s ultimately successful Senate campaign in Arizona:

“A lot of [voters] look at Trump as a businessman, not as a politician,” Mr. Gallego said in an interview, describing [people] who are supporting both him and the former president. “For me, it’ll be like, ‘You’re a veteran. I like that,’ ‘You come from the working class’ or ‘You understand what it means to be a worker.’ I think a lot of them feel like I meet their vibe [emphasis added], that they can trust me.”

On a recent Sunday night in Phoenix, Mr. Gallego, a former Marine who served in Iraq, was ordering dinner at a restaurant when he was approached by a man wearing a MAGA hat and a Trump T-shirt who asked him for a photo. Mr. Gallego agreed, and the man shortly returned with a challenge. He and some of his friends who are veterans were interested in voting for Mr. Gallego, the man said, but wanted the congressman to give him a reason to support him.

Mr. Gallego replied that he wouldn’t ever be 100 percent aligned with the man or his friends, but that he would work for them and be willing to listen to their views. “Good enough,” the man replied.

The interaction, Mr. Gallego said, reflected a dynamic he has noticed among some Trump voters — mostly men — who he believes are supporting the former president as a way of asserting independence.

“It’s hard to put my finger on it,” he said. “At the end of the day, they just want to be different. Being different means being for Trump.”

What Gallego described is an approach to politics among some voters that has little or nothing to do with the liberal-conservative spectrum. It might fit the “globalist-nationalist” dimension, but even that is too issue-focused to capture what he was talking about — or maybe the appeal of a Perot or an Osborn or a Kaptur. Or why so many people would vote for Obama or Sanders on the one hand, and then turn around and vote for Trump. And of course Liz Cheney’s appeal to people who agree with her on nothing — what’s that about?

Let’s take a step back and remember that many voters don’t think about issues in the way journalists and political junkies do. They are busy with their lives and their challenges in making ends meet. If they, for example, believe that something is terribly wrong with the direction the country is going (Gallup had it 22-76, the country’s on the right track v. the country’s on the wrong track around election day this year) they may not have a ready solution in mind. But they want something to change; they’re willing to try anything. Such voters might ask: “Do these candidates see things the way I do? Or are they sitting back fat and happy with the way things are?”

These are the voters who are ripe for the picking for a non-ideological approach of the kind Gallego offered the voters he described. This third dimension is the opposite of the cool calculation of policy solutions put forward by an Elizabeth Warren on the left or a Paul Ryan on the right. It’s a we-need-to-burn-the-house-down or at least really shake things up before we get back on track.

There’s certainly an anti-elite aspect to this phenomenon, perhaps best represented by a spectrum with populism on one end and elitism on the other. That continuum seems to capture why liberal elites responded positively to staunch conservative Liz Cheney. She was, in many respects, a kindred spirit in the sense of occupying an exalted place in establishment Washington, and of course she fought populists in her party tooth and nail.

Thinking outside the box
This populism-elitism dimension can, in some circumstances, trump (no pun intended) the dominance of the 2x2 matrix. You have to think outside the box — literally — to get what happened with Republicans as they migrated to MAGA world, ignoring long held GOP establishment views on trade, foreign policy, and even respect for law enforcement. For a lot of people apparently it’s not all about issues, or even mostly.

Democrats remain stuck in the box, merely tinkering with positioning on the left-right spectrum. To break out of their position of distinct disadvantage they have to reckon more seriously with the dire right track-wrong track polling and acknowledge that the establishment angle is a loser. John Fetterman, Ruben Gallego, and Marcy Kaptur understand something about what makes so many voters tick that seems to elude Biden, Harris, Pelosi, and national Democratic operatives.

The importance of the third dimension
One challenge is, as Gallego articulated in Edmondson’s NYT article, that what drives a lot of voters is hard to put your finger on. It doesn’t lend itself easily to quantification in the way issue-based paradigms do. But it might be possible to get at this dimension by including right track-wrong track polling and attitudes about the political establishment in the analysis.

At the very least we need to recognize that, just as voters who are conflicted in the traditional matrix (say, conservative on economics and liberal on social issues) prioritize one dimension over the other in their vote choice, many swing voters ignore both dimensions in their eagerness to shake up the system. Of course, on the other side of the coin, if someone sees populism as a dire threat to the system they might support an Adam Kinzinger or a Liz Cheney despite disagreeing with them on the issues.

Last but not least, while some Democrats recognize the importance of thinking “outside the box,” the party is being lapped by Republicans in the race to curry favor with voters who are looking to shake up the status quo. In fact Republicans’ ability to make inroads in traditional Democratic constituencies is founded on doing exactly this.