Where American Political Parties Lay on the Global Left-Right Spectrum

[mindlight]

Interesting analysis here:
Opinion | What Happened to America’s Political Center of Gravity?

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It is an interesting analysis thanks for sharing. America strikes me as having more active church goers than Europe and the influence of religion on politics is clear and seems quite constant. Religious families have more kids than left wing atheists. But that does not fit easily into the right left definition. In Europe religion has had a compassionate emphasis in pacifist welfare politics since WW2 while in America religion has seemed to bolster a strong military, a view of the rule of law and policies on social morality. Also having never granted the state a monopoly of force its gun laws will naturally place it more to the right. Also it lacks the history of persistent extreme absolute poverty that motivated socialist revolutions and welfare states in nineteenth century Europe although inequality today between the rich and poor is much more extreme in the USA than in Europe. It has never been invaded and had to completely rebuild its infrastructure overnight.

American corporate culture does not seem to me to be a force for the right. For instance the political correctness that defines the Democrats is rife in many American company mission statements.

I think the gap between Republicans and Democrats is actually more interesting as it seems a more extreme gap than in many European countries between left and right.

 

[FireDragon76]

It is an interesting analysis thanks for sharing. America strikes me as having more active church goers than Europe and the influence of religion on politics is clear and seems quite constant. Religious families have more kids than left wing atheists

And some atheists grow up in religious homes. Aside from the Amish, who have very high retention rates of their young, many children of religious families leave religion behind and never return.

 

[Kalevalatar]

As an outsider none of this is surprising. I have always seen American political parties as collectively shifted well to the right compared to the Australian spectrum. From what I know of the UK spectrum the same applies. I'm less familiar with Europe but I get the impression that they are also similar - particularly the Scandinavian countries.

I definitely agree. From my privileged Nordic perch, the United States is a right-wing country with two right-wing parties ruling the roost: the right-wing Democrats and the far-right Republicans.

As a Christian Democrat, I'm a centrist conservative in Finland. I don't vote our one and only centre-right party, the liberal-conservative NCP (however, DH does), because I'm uncomfortable with their market liberalism even though the party does support the Nordic social democratic welfare state model (which I support). The NCP however, is still left of the US Democrats, so much so that there's a running joke about NCP's three certified right-wingers, Stubb, Sasi and Zyskowicz, that they are "the three Democrats of Finland." I could never ever vote for the kind of policies US Democrats run with IRL, because they serve Mammon instead of People, even when they serve Mammon just a little bit less than the Republican policies that champion corrupt corporatism.

 

[MorkandMindy]

1. We know political stances are multidimensional, at the very least. I'll draw one if you like.
2. That chart is one-dimensional and absurdly focused
3. Most of the useful information is missing

4. To describe a person on the basis of just one parameter is oversimplification to the absurd
5. It is only done in the chart to make things look and sound so simple a voter can vote on the basis of really nothing and feel good about it.

For example in real actual life Hillary Clinton was promoting TPP which was to streamline selling Chinese and other Far Eastern goods in the US with the obvious intent of harming US manufacturing.

Donald Trump took the opposite stance, for the workers.

Which stance was further to the Right?

Donald Trump did other things, his tax cut for the upper end of the income scale was a right wing action. Politics is complicated.