One of the persistent structural issues with American politics is that a greater number of Americans self-identity as conservative than liberal, so the Republican party can be dominated by conservatives in a manner in which the Democratic party can not. This is not to speak to whether people are in substance more conservative or not, rather, I'm still addressing self-perception. You can see the trend over the past 30 years from the GSS in the United States:
I was curious as to whether this bias is an international phenomenon. There is a question in the WVS which asks: 'In political matters, people talk of "the left" and "the right." How would you place your views on this scale, generally speaking?' The scale goes from 1, which is furthest Left, to 10, which is furthest Right. I looked at the WVS 3, 4 and 5 (a span from the mid-1990s to the late 2000s). Here is a histogram generated from the median values of all the nations (some replicated across waves):
As you can see, the central tendency just a bit to the Center-Right. The median value in the data set is 5.6 (standard deviation 0.68). No idea if this means anything, but I did wonder if sometimes there's a human cognitive bias to perceive oneself as "conservative" because of risk-aversion, but these results don't seem to be very strong (I'm sure some of the results, such as Vietnam, are due some strange quirks of phrasing which didn't translate well). Here's a table of the data points....
| Country | Mean Political |
| Zimbabwe | 3.7 |
| India | 4.4 |
| Egypt | 4.5 |
| Spain | 4.6 |
| Andorra | 4.6 |
| Burkina Faso | 4.7 |
| Germany | 4.7 |
| Spain | 4.7 |
| France | 4.8 |
| Bulgaria | 4.8 |
| Iran (Islamic Republic of) | 4.8 |
| Germany | 4.8 |
| Spain | 4.8 |
| Serbia and Montenegro | 4.8 |
| Iraq | 4.9 |
| France | 4.9 |
| Russian Federation | 4.9 |
| Russian Federation | 4.9 |
| Slovenia | 5 |
| Republic of Moldova | 5 |
| Italy | 5.1 |
| Bosnia and Herzegovina | 5.1 |
| Greece | 5.1 |
| Hungary | 5.1 |
| Israel | 5.1 |
| Netherlands | 5.1 |
| Slovakia | 5.1 |
| Great Britain | 5.1 |
| Albania | 5.1 |
| Bosnia and Herzegovina | 5.1 |
| Hungary | 5.1 |
| Macedonia, Republic of | 5.1 |
| Netherlands | 5.2 |
| Switzerland | 5.2 |
| Uruguay | 5.2 |
| Chile | 5.2 |
| Germany | 5.2 |
| Macedonia, Republic of | 5.2 |
| Serbia and Montenegro | 5.2 |
| Croatia | 5.2 |
| Republic of Korea | 5.2 |
| Slovenia | 5.2 |
| South Africa | 5.2 |
| Great Britain | 5.3 |
| Slovenia | 5.3 |
| Cyprus | 5.3 |
| Albania | 5.3 |
| Belgium | 5.3 |
| Croatia | 5.3 |
| Portugal | 5.3 |
| Sweden | 5.3 |
| Australia | 5.3 |
| Belarus | 5.3 |
| Romania | 5.3 |
| Slovakia | 5.3 |
| Sweden | 5.3 |
| Switzerland | 5.3 |
| Ukraine | 5.3 |
| Brazil | 5.4 |
| Chile | 5.4 |
| Mali | 5.4 |
| Austria | 5.4 |
| Italy | 5.4 |
| Republic of Korea | 5.4 |
| Lithuania | 5.4 |
| Luxembourg | 5.4 |
| Poland | 5.4 |
| Armenia | 5.4 |
| Chile | 5.4 |
| Estonia | 5.4 |
| Latvia | 5.4 |
| Canada | 5.5 |
| Japan | 5.5 |
| Canada | 5.5 |
| Denmark | 5.5 |
| Nigeria | 5.5 |
| Uganda | 5.5 |
| Ukraine | 5.5 |
| Azerbaijan | 5.5 |
| Australia | 5.6 |
| Norway | 5.6 |
| Sweden | 5.6 |
| Finland | 5.6 |
| Ukraine | 5.6 |
| Rwanda | 5.6 |
| Ireland | 5.6 |
| Republic of Moldova | 5.6 |
| Northern Ireland | 5.6 |
| Finland | 5.6 |
| Nigeria | 5.6 |
| Norway | 5.6 |
| United States | 5.7 |
| Argentina | 5.7 |
| Peru | 5.7 |
| New Zealand | 5.7 |
| Morocco | 5.7 |
| Jordan | 5.7 |
| Belarus | 5.7 |
| India | 5.7 |
| Japan | 5.7 |
| Peru | 5.7 |
| South Africa | 5.7 |
| Argentina | 5.7 |
| Mexico | 5.7 |
| Poland | 5.7 |
| Uruguay | 5.7 |
| South Korea | 5.8 |
| Bulgaria | 5.8 |
| Finland | 5.8 |
| Iceland | 5.8 |
| Latvia | 5.8 |
| Malta | 5.8 |
| Romania | 5.8 |
| Turkey | 5.8 |
| United States | 5.8 |
| Bulgaria | 5.8 |
| Lithuania | 5.8 |
| New Zealand | 5.8 |
| Peru | 5.8 |
| United States | 5.8 |
| Poland | 5.9 |
| Serbia | 5.9 |
| Guatemala | 5.9 |
| Estonia | 5.9 |
| Jordan | 5.9 |
| Morocco | 5.9 |
| Pakistan | 5.9 |
| Brazil | 5.9 |
| Czech Republic | 5.9 |
| Georgia | 5.9 |
| Japan | 5.9 |
| Romania | 6 |
| Taiwan | 6 |
| Moldova | 6 |
| Georgia | 6 |
| Argentina | 6 |
| Czech Republic | 6 |
| Trinidad and Tobago | 6.1 |
| Philippines | 6.1 |
| Turkey | 6.1 |
| Mexico | 6.2 |
| Turkey | 6.2 |
| Thailand | 6.2 |
| Algeria | 6.2 |
| Kyrgyzstan | 6.2 |
| Venezuela | 6.3 |
| El Salvador | 6.3 |
| Hong Kong | 6.4 |
| Philippines | 6.4 |
| Ghana | 6.5 |
| Indonesia | 6.6 |
| Ethiopia | 6.6 |
| Indonesia | 6.6 |
| Puerto Rico | 6.6 |
| Taiwan Province of China | 6.6 |
| Colombia | 6.6 |
| Dominican Republic | 6.6 |
| India | 6.6 |
| South Africa | 6.7 |
| Zambia | 6.7 |
| Mexico | 6.7 |
| Puerto Rico | 6.7 |
| Venezuela | 6.7 |
| Colombia | 6.8 |
| Tanzania, United Republic Of | 6.8 |
| Bangladesh | 7 |
| Bangladesh | 7.6 |
| Viet Nam | 9 |
| Viet Nam | 9.1 |
Note: The scale on the question is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10. So 1-5 would be on the Left side, and 6-10 on the Right.
Labels: politics
