We’ve now had more than 2,400 responses to the reader poll on your political views, and I find the results really interesting. The single biggest category was self-identified libertarians, 29% of the responses. That’s not surprising: we’re a libertarian-leaning group, even if we sometimes occupy the Ninth Circle of Libertarian Hell.
I was surprised by some of the results, though. In particular, there was an almost perfect symmetry between right-of-center and left-of-center responses. Taking out the 29% who identified as libertarian and the 8% who felt they didn’t really fit a category, the remaining group broke down as follows:
I’m very conservative 11%
I’m moderately conservative 18%
I’m in the center 7%
I’m moderately liberal 18%
I’m very liberal 8%
According to these figures, 29% of responses identified readers as right-of-center, and 26% identified readers as left-of-center. Further, 43% identified themselves as being moderates in one way or another (moderate conservatives, centrists, or moderate liberals). In contrast, only 19% of responses identified readers as strongly on the left or right.
It’s not scientific, of course, but I still think it’s very interesting. Incidentally, I found the free Pollhost software very easy to use; I’ll probably be doing more polls on occasion in the future to gauge reader response to current events and stuff like that. Anyway, thanks to everyone who participated.
UPDATE: I have amended the post to clarify that the blockquoted list is just a subset of the results. Sorry if that caused confusion.