“While slightly more independents say they ‘lean Democrat’, they still identify as fairly conservative.”
Self-identification polling is fairly meaningless; the only thing it measures is how people respond to words (words that, for most, are pretty ambiguous). Pollsters know this and talk about it but some of them continue to do such polling, for whatever reason. To get an idea of where people stand politically, you have to do a broad canvas of opinion polling, something Americans can do because they’re polled to death. When one undertakes that process, one is hard-pressed to find a single major issue on which Americans aren’t just liberal but liberal by overwhelming numbers. This piece, which examines the popularity of Bernie Sanders’ major issues, is a good example:
You have to look at what people think, not what label they apply to themselves.
