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HappySqurriel on 28 February 2010
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tarheel91 said:

Oh god, this is so statistically misleading. They give points for averages instead or ranges. That's something EVERYONE who's taken a even the smallest amount of statistics should know is a no no. The article says the difference is "statistically significant" but gives no indication of what alpha is. If alpha's .3, "statistically significant" doesn't really mean much. The study mentions large samples, but gives no indication as to the actual number. All the data is gathered retroactively, that is, gathered from old surveys and reports, which is never as good as data gathered during the study. We have no idea how good the statistics were from these reports/surveys were either.

The fact that they use points instead of ranges, and their refusal to give numbers when it comes to alpha and sample sizes makes this data very questionable.

To the people talking about liberal vs. conservative and poor vs. rich, general trends are as follows (taken from a Government and Politics course): Conservatism increases with money, but decreases with education. Education tends to have a more powerful effect than money. However, conservatism also increases with age.

Liberalism and conservatism are largely false constructs of political movements who want to divide people into two distinct categories; primarily to change the tone of the debate into an "Us vs. Them" argument. On most issues there are a myriad of possible stances that people can take; and very few of these positions would fall into a crisp/clear Conservative or Liberal category.

Take the current healthcare debate for example, most Americans would probably agree that healthcare reform is important but there are massive disagreements about what this reform should look like. Some people want to return the private system to function as intended and would focus on removing barriers to that happening, other people would be looking to scrap the private system and replace it with a public universal system, even more people might believe that both systems could co-exist, and another group might believe in a hybrid system; at the same time other people might be thinking that the out of control costs are simply a symptom of the greater problem of Americans becoming less healthy, and another group might believe that the concept of Healthcare is flawed and we should focus on preventing illness rather than curing it. This isn’t even close to being a comprehensive list of the views people might have on healthcare, and there are already a half a dozen valid viewpoints.

Unfortunately, the political system is very backwards and it seems like most people are evangelizing the beliefs of the party rather than forcing the party to subscribe to their values; and this just means that the diversity of positions and ideologies is largely being destroyed and everyone is being forced into a unnatural binary system.