Writing on The Corner a couple of days ago, Ramesh Ponnuru briefly summarized his recent article on Politico, “No, America Isn’t Moving Left,” in which he argued persuasively that “[t]he real defect in the theory that America is moving left is that the polling evidence does not back it up…. In fact,” he noted, “the longer you look at polls on specific issues, the less you see a picture of a country moving left.”
Ponnuru compared polls from 1999-2000 to recent ones on “guns, unions, regulation, abortion, the size of government, and inequality” to buttress his conclusion that the country has not moved left.
A comparison of polls on race preferences in higher education would have strengthened his case even more.
One has to be careful in evaluating polls and surveys in this area. Americans tend to support policies described as “affirmative action” and helping minorities, but majorities oppose policies described as providing preferential treatment based on race. And there is no difference on that score between measures of public opinion taken around 1999-2000 and now.
For example, summarizing recent polling and survey data in 2001 Jennifer Hochschild found that about 75 percent of whites and 50 percent of blacks “consistently agree that blacks should ‘work their way up … without special favors’” and that “85% or more of whites” and “about three-fifths of blacks” favor “ability” rather than “preferential treatment” to determine who gets into college.
Things haven’t changed. In 2012 Rasmussen reported that “just 24% of Likely U.S. Voters favor applying affirmative action policies to college admissions. Fifty-five percent (55%) oppose the use of such policies to determine who is admitted to colleges and universities.” Similarly, Gallup confirmed (2013) that “two thirds of Americans believe college applicants should be admitted solely based on merit, even if that results in few minorities being admitted.” The Washington Post/ABC poll found the same thing in 2013. Seventy-six percent of all respondents and 79 percent of registered voters opposed “allowing universities to consider applicants race as a factor in deciding which students to admit.”
Some may find it surprising that students provide no exception to the above consistency. Thus, as Roger Kimball has noted, a John Zogby poll in 2000 “reveals that while a large majority (84.3 percent) of students say that ethnic diversity is important, ‘92.7 percent oppose giving preferences to blacks and Hispanics, favoring fair enrollment instead.’ Further, four out of five students hold that lowering entrance standards for some students—regardless of the reason—is unfair to other students.” And again, things haven’t changed. In May 2014 an MTV survey “found something shocking about millennials: 88% think affirmative action policies are unfair.”
Americans have clearly moved left on acceptance of gay marriage in the past decade or so, and maybe on a few other issues, but not, as Ponnuru has demonstrated, on “guns, unions, regulation, abortion, the size of government, and inequality” … or on the issue of racial preference in college admission.