RasmussenReports.com, August 27th, 2006
Rasmussen Reports surveys of leading national political figures find that Al Gore is perceived as a bit more liberal by the voting public than either Bill or Hillary Clinton. In fact, public perceptions put the former vice president further to the left of center than President Bush is to the right.
Note: The political center is calculated by subtracting the number of liberals from the number of conservatives among the general public (35% conservative, 18% liberal for a net +17).
Two Republican presidential hopefuls—Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani—are fairly close to the nation’s political center. Not only are McCain and Giuliani closer to the nation’s political center than others we tested, they are closer to the political center of the Democratic rank-and-file than any of the Democratic leaders included in the poll.
Democrats across the nation are 28 points left of center and Republicans are 42 points right of center. This also means that public perceptions see McCain and Giuliani as closer to the center of the Democratic Party than to the center of their own party.
Looking at how the numbers shake out, President Bush falls to the far right side of the scale, 29 points from the political center. He’s alone at that extreme; Giuliani is his closest neighbor, placing three points to the left of center.
Meeting Giuliani in the middle is McCain, who falls eight points to the left. That’s where the moderate zone ends. Fifty-five points left of center is where the perpetual political barometer Hillary Clinton can be found, only two points ahead of her husband. Serving as the liberal bookend is Gore, who places 60 points to the left of the political center.
The political center is calculated by subtracting the number of liberals from the number of conservatives among the general public (35% conservative, 18% liberal for a net +17). For each individual, we perform a similar calculation based upon public perceptions of their own ideology. For example, here is the calculation for Giuliani--29% conservative minus 15% liberal equals a net plus 14. The plus 14 reading for Giuliani is 3 points away from the plus 17 reading for the general public.
Rasmussen Reports is also testing ideological perceptions of senators and governors in more than 30 states across the country. Access to those results will be available to Premium Members.
Numbers for Hillary Clinton are current as of the date of this article. We update ratings for the New York Senator every other week on the Hillary Meter page.
The national telephone survey of 1,000 Adults was conducted by Rasmussen Reports August 8-9, 2006. The margin of sampling error for the survey is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.
Rasmussen Reports is an electronic publishing firm specializing in the collection, publication, and distribution of public opinion polling information.
