If I were a conservative, I would probably tout the new Gallup study showing that conservatives now outnumber moderates, as Bill Kristol did in his column on Tuesday. But I'd be wary of making too much of what is a rather small shift in the ideological self-description of Americans. And out of curiosity, I checked around with other pollsters to see what they were finding. The results were mixed.
First, those Gallup numbers: Forty percent of Americans describe their political views as conservative, 36 percent as moderate, and 20 percent as liberal. "This marks a shift from 2005 through 2008, when moderates were tied with conservatives as the most prevalent group," Gallup reported of its study based on combining16 surveys for a sample of 16,321.
The shift...
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