The State of American Political Ideology, 2009 - don't make the RW M$Greedia hacks fool you

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http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/03/political_ideology.html
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The growing progressive movement in the United States finds itself at a historic and propitious crossroads. With large Democratic majorities in both chambers of Congress and an ambitious new president who campaigned and won election on promises of bold changes—both serving a citizenry that is deeply frustrated with the status quo and desperate for new leadership at all levels of our society—the potential for true progressive governance is greater than at any point in decades. Driven by a rising generation of young 18- to 29-year-old “Millennial” generation voters whose vast numbers and unique worldview have already made a significant impact at the ballot box, our country is embracing many core progressive values and shows a real commitment to a progressive vision of government, international affairs, and economic and political policies that could transform the country in a way that has not been seen since FDR and the New Deal.

The 2008 presidential election not only solidified demographic and partisan shifts toward the Democratic Party but also marked a significant turn in the ideological landscape of the electorate. After nearly three decades of public acceptance of the Reagan-Bush model of conservatism—limited government, tax cuts, traditional values, and military strength— a broad and deep cross-section of the American public now holds markedly progressive attitudes about government and society.

Our inaugural “State of American Political Ideology” survey, which employed a unique measurement of ideological self-identification to explore a more complicated ideological
landscape than typically described in other studies of public opinion, was primarily designed to assess the ideological balance in America based on responses to 40 questions equally divided between progressive and conservative beliefs. Our survey results show that Americans are solidly center-left in their ideas about role of government, the economy, and domestic politics and somewhat less so on cultural and social issues.

For years, traditional public opinion polling has broken down ideology into three distinct groupings: liberal, moderate, and conservative. Based on this categorization, there has been remarkable stability in ideological orientation, with roughly one-fifth of Americans identifying themselves as “liberal” and about four in 10 classifying themselves as “moderate”
or ”conservative,” respectively, according to Gallup polling from 1992 to 2008.

The Study in detail
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/03/pdf/political_ideology.pdf

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