Life Inside The Liberal Bubble

Only 61% of Democrats are even aware that federal spending has risen during the past ten years. Most of the article is behind a pay wall, but a summary may be found here.

More than three-quarters of Republicans (76%) want a spending cap that indexes spending to population growth, and half of those who don’t want a stricter spending cap.  Only 36% of Democrats want an indexed cap, and 49% of those who don’t prefer a looser cap, and another 22% want no cap at all.  The indexed cap gets 57% of independents, but only 31% of independents opposed to it want a stricter cap.  Nevertheless, support for caps of one sort or another add up to around 60% of the overall electorate — which would make it difficult for Democrats to run on a spend-more platform.

First, though, you’d have to make sure that people understand that we are spending more over the last ten years.  Nearly nine of ten Republicans know it (86%), and almost as many independents (81%).  Only 61% of Democrats correctly answer that question, while 16% believe it’s stayed the same.  

Younger voters tend to follow the same pattern (66% and 10% respectively), while older demos have more than 80% each answering correctly.  Self-identified Tea Party members do a little better than non-members (87% to 73%), while the working-class incomes score higher than lower and higher brackets.

The most ironic part of the survey?  The political class, which should know this better than most, only gets 65% answering correctly, while 85% of the mainstream gets it right.  That tells us we probably need a new political class, eh?