Moderates and Party ID

I was reading the local paper in an airport somewhere in the Midwest on Friday- either Omaha or Chicago- and saw a letter to the editor referencing the recent Pew finding that a plurality of Americans are conservatives and wondering why the Democrats are still in charge.

I can answer that question pretty easily: Republicans have ceded the middle to the Democrats. We've broken down party identification by ideology identification nationally and in six different states over the last two months. Here are the numbers:

Party ID of Moderates	Democrat	Republican	Independent
National	49	20	31
Alabama	44	26	30
Illinois	47	22	31
North Carolina	53	23	24
Ohio	55	23	23
West Virginia	60	25	14
Wisconsin	45	18	37

So there are more than twice as many Democrats as Republicans among moderates in all of these geographies with the exception of Alabama.

Taking it a step further, Democrats are doing nearly as well among conservatives as Republicans are among moderates:

State	% of moderates who are Republicans	% of conservatives who are Democrats
National	20	19
Alabama	26	20
Illinois	22	21
North Carolina	23	24
Ohio	23	19
West Virginia	25	29
Wisconsin	18	13

On average only 2% more of moderates are identifying with the Republican Party than conservatives are identifying with the Democratic party.

In other words Democrats are doing nearly as well with right leaning voters as Republicans are with centrists. As long as that's the case, the GOP will continue to be out of power.