America's eight political tribes

Averaging the forecasts, Wisconsin polling woes, the fight over crowd size, how the election will affect the markets, the battle for religious voters, Census data misses migrants

No. 330 | September 13th, 2024

📊  Public Opinion

Each year, my team at Echelon Insights produces a Political Quadrants and Multiparty Democracy poll that goes beyond the traditional left-right divide to identify the country’s political tribes in a nuanced way. In a recent survey conducted in conjunction with Baron Public Affairs, we wanted to take this a step further, by not applying fixed definitions to these tribes, and simply letting the data sort them for us. 

How did we do that? Though a cluster analysis applied to our normal social and economic indices plus a new index that measures trust in institutions and the positions taken by most experts—from NATO to free trade to vaccines. This latter populist vs. establishmentarian dimension is the fuel for the rise of Trump to Brexit to populist parties worldwide. And, as it turns out, it has a lot of explanatory value, dividing members of the political parties themselves better than the normal social and economic questions. 

Check out the…