Data: US Still Center-Right After 2008 Election

But can we keep it that way? Tony Blankley at WaPo:

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... It is revealing that the exit polling disclosed that the public self-identified itself as 44 percent moderate, 34 percent conservative, 22 percent liberal, which was statistically identical (45-34-21) to the numbers after Bush's 2004 victory. ...

...Consider that in 1980, when Ronald Reagan won his first presidential election, the public was self-identified as 46 percent moderate, 28 percent conservative and17 percent liberal. But by the 1984 Reagan re-election the public had shifted to 42 percent moderate, 33 percent conservative and 16 percent liberal - a statistically significant shift to the right. In those four years Mr. Reagan had convinced 5 percent of the electorate to move largely from moderate to conservative. And that 5 percent have stayed conservative for 24 years, right through the 2008 election. It is that 5 percent that has made America a center-right country, rather than a centrist country - allowing a fairly conservative Republican Party to win both congressional and presidential elections most of the time.