# In your ideal electorate, what % of the voters would be conservatives? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [September 25, 2024, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-your-ideal-electorate-what-of-the-voters-would-be-conservatives/1007689 "2024-09-25T01:32:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![ParallelLines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/parallellines/32/3575_2.png) [@ParallelLines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParallelLines)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2024, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-your-ideal-electorate-what-of-the-voters-would-be-conservatives/1007689/61 "2024-10-02T23:33:19Z")
I am not @MrDibble, nor am I authorized to speak on their behalf, nor do I even play them on TV! But speaking to your question for myself, I see the problems with 100% of anything is that we’re, sadly, human. And we are extremely prone to factionalism. So even if you start with 100% of _anything_ who all agree on the same goals, they may not want them in the same _order_. I mean, and back to the USA specifically, Democrats are a pretty broad tent, from actual Socialists (which is NOT a bad word to be clear), to Green First individuals, to social equality first, to “mainstream” Democrats, to extremely conservative democrats, and even some reluctant post-MAGA former Republicans. The moment MAGA is out of the way (or long before, if you look at certainly elements such as the “undecideds”) the factionalism rears it’s head and and as a result, _nothing_ gets done. The reverse has also been true, I mean, look at the whole Speaker of the House issue! I’d argue that the Republicans, Tea Party remnants, and MAGA are overall far closer than the various wings of the Democratic party, but they couldn’t wait to apply purity tests to their own, even when it made them look like squabbling children to everyone else not insulated by a partisan news bubble. I don’t think it’s _healthy_ mind you, but I think it’s entirely too human, and that’s one of the reasons I feel like having a certain degree of opposition is useful (see my 70/30 comment above) especially if said opposition is at least rational. IRL though, no, it’s NOT rational here, and we are far from being able to achieve @HMS_Irruncible’s worthwhile goals that enable said irrational actors to dominate. > [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > If we get rid of distortions of public will such as the electoral college, gerrymandering, and the non-proportional Senate, then we wouldn’t need a magic slider. Elections would accurately reflect the will of the people, which shouldn’t be overridden. Minor niggles with the statement of “the will of the people, which shouldn’t be overridden” especially in a world where his next (IMHO fully accurate) statement shows the role of corporate and profit focused media isn’t putting a huge weight on the scales remains. I do think having guiderails that protect minority viewpoints from the will of the majority are by and large a good thing, but acknowledge everyone draws it differently. IE if 50.0000000001% vote to require the rest of the population to wear Giant Purple People Eater Masks (going low stakes here so I don’t step on anyone’s private crusade, unless you’re super pro-PPE) I’d like there to be provisions to protect the rest. But our current bar on Constitutional amendments are far too high IMHO as well. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2024, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-your-ideal-electorate-what-of-the-voters-would-be-conservatives/1007689/62 "2024-10-03T00:15:10Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Out of curiosity, what do you think would be the downsides of a society where 100% of people are social democrats? Or is there no downside at all? In a realistic scenario, the obvious risk is that anyone deciding they want to institute some more authoritarian version of socialism would probably find it easier. Lots of people will support authoritarianism if they think it’ll enforce the “correct” ideology. In this scenario though authoritarianism is magically impossible unless the “sliders” are set for it at the start. That said, in a realistic scenario where (nearly) everyone is a “social democrat” and there’s no magical sliders locking people in place what I’d expect is that being a social democrat wouldn’t be considered a political position in the first place by most people, just the default assumption of how things work. Instead “politics” would be about various other issues _within_ that social democratic framework. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2024, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-your-ideal-electorate-what-of-the-voters-would-be-conservatives/1007689/63 "2024-10-03T04:45:16Z")
It would be a fairly high-tax society. That’s the only downside I see. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2024, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-your-ideal-electorate-what-of-the-voters-would-be-conservatives/1007689/64 "2024-10-03T04:50:16Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > , I consider myself a social democrat and a liberal You can’t be both, IMO. They’re ideologically close, enough that an organisation could claim both, but have some significant differences around individualism that render them mutually exclusive ideologies for one person to hold. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2024, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-your-ideal-electorate-what-of-the-voters-would-be-conservatives/1007689/65 "2024-10-03T15:33:24Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > In a realistic scenario, the obvious risk is that anyone deciding they want to institute some more authoritarian version of socialism would probably find it easier. Lots of people will support authoritarianism if they think it’ll enforce the “correct” ideology. Except that in an “Everyone agrees” scenario, you don’t need authoritarianism to get things done, so there’d be no great urge to “Let him win, it’s the only way we’ll get what we all want!” I mean, nowhere in North America is there an Automobile Gestapo, kicking in doors and forcing people to buy cars so that they can pave everything in sight. We did all that of our own accord, because the vast majority of the population during the latter part of the 20th century wanted cars, and paving. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2024, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-your-ideal-electorate-what-of-the-voters-would-be-conservatives/1007689/66 "2024-10-03T16:02:18Z")
Except if you deliberately cripple the public transportation infrastructure, not having a car becomes an active hardship for everyone. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2024, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-your-ideal-electorate-what-of-the-voters-would-be-conservatives/1007689/67 "2024-10-07T17:26:40Z")
The big distinction that matters is between groups that self-police and groups that don’t. Liberals and Democrats self-police. Republicans and Reactionaries do not. It doesn’t _have_ to be that way. It wasn’t _always_ that way. For example in 1964 the mainstream wing of the Republican Party led by Nelson Rockefeller proposed that the GOP convention should denounce _all_ kinds of extremism be they communist or of the John Birch Society variety. It received much support. But not majority support: too many of Goldwater’s supporters were Birchers themselves, many of them on the floor of that very convention. That was the beginning of the reactionary counter-attack. Today the crazy tail of the GOP wags the governing dog. The leader of the House Republicans can’t bring himself to say that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, nor can the VP nominee. Noah Smith: > > > Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @Noahpinion > **Noah Smith tweet transcript** > > A year ago today, American liberals started to wake up to the evil that had grown in leftist circles. > > Fortunately, liberals acted quickly to marginalize that evil, and its impact has been very minor so far. > > [Palestine is the end of the line for the New Left](https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/palestine-is-the-end-of-the-line) > > Remember, the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats marginalize their crazies, while the GOP puts them in charge. > > [https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed\_fullsize/plain/did:plc:kem5cevl5sjpizk4s27cbyig/bafkreidz6goeaxwopo5i6wbjbkrqvbbbut6rm7zj2sid3zrlshhlusrx4q@jpeg](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:kem5cevl5sjpizk4s27cbyig/bafkreidz6goeaxwopo5i6wbjbkrqvbbbut6rm7zj2sid3zrlshhlusrx4q@jpeg) So 0% for operations that can’t or won’t self-police. This of course is a matter of calibration: circular firing squads are another unfortunate characteristic of the left. Curbing the crazy is the goal, not purity. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2024, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-your-ideal-electorate-what-of-the-voters-would-be-conservatives/1007689/68 "2024-10-07T17:45:32Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > That said, in a realistic scenario where (nearly) everyone is a “social democrat” and there’s no magical sliders locking people in place what I’d expect is that being a social democrat wouldn’t be considered a political position in the first place by most people, just the default assumption of how things work. Instead “politics” would be about various other issues _within_ that social democratic framework. The US had something like that for many years: the received wisdom of the founding fathers was that of liberal democracy. (I’ll include the framers of the 14th amendment in the founding father group - that was the [2nd founding](https://www.pressherald.com/2024/10/05/opinion-backlash-to-trump-could-spark-the-fourth-founding/)). There’s a very wide group stretching from Milton Friedman to Bernie Sanders and beyond operating within a framework of rationalist democracy. That was my default assumption for many years. The naivite of that view might have been more apparent in countries with proportional representation whose fringe groups are better organized, or if I paid sharper attention to Jim Crow. Or if was able to see through the intellectual superstructure of US reactionaries, a superstructure that they abandoned overnight in 2016 because it never represented their actual beliefs. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2024, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-your-ideal-electorate-what-of-the-voters-would-be-conservatives/1007689/69 "2024-10-07T18:10:54Z")
100% of the ideal electorate should be Liberal, as in, committed to liberal values. Within that framework, I would probably want around 50% to fall under the left/center left range (what we generally call Liberals), and 20-30% each to be Progressive and Conservative (but only the liberal varieties of each!) with the exact breakdown varying based on where society is at that moment. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2024, 11:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-your-ideal-electorate-what-of-the-voters-would-be-conservatives/1007689/70 "2024-10-08T11:11:09Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > Today the crazy tail of the GOP wags the governing dog. The “dog” at this point is 99.9% tail. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2024, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-your-ideal-electorate-what-of-the-voters-would-be-conservatives/1007689/71 "2024-10-08T11:16:44Z")
> [@Gyrate](#): > > The “dog” at this point is 99.9% tail. Yeah; MAGA aren’t the fringe of the Republicans, they _are_ the mainstream. ---
**Author:** ![Cmyers1980](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyers1980/32/11814_2.png) [@Cmyers1980](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cmyers1980)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2024, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-your-ideal-electorate-what-of-the-voters-would-be-conservatives/1007689/72 "2024-10-10T13:33:52Z")
I’d make everyone socialists. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2024, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-your-ideal-electorate-what-of-the-voters-would-be-conservatives/1007689/73 "2024-10-10T17:39:21Z")
In my ideal system? Something like 40% would be republican. Just enough so that they feel compelled to become sane to become competitive, but they only win in rare instances. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2024, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-your-ideal-electorate-what-of-the-voters-would-be-conservatives/1007689/74 "2024-10-11T15:50:47Z")
They are already a minority; they win by cheating and because the system favors them. And they can’t “become sane to become competitive” because then they wouldn’t _be_ conservative. They are competitive because they _aren’t;_ the fanatics and extremists are their base. The closest thing to “sane conservatives” would be the Democrats. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2024, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-your-ideal-electorate-what-of-the-voters-would-be-conservatives/1007689/75 "2024-10-11T17:53:57Z")
Republicans are a minority, but they aren’t a 40% minority. More like a 46-48% minority. But if they were a 40% minority maybe that would put some pressure on them to act more sane in the hopes of winning close elections. Hopefully at least. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2024, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-your-ideal-electorate-what-of-the-voters-would-be-conservatives/1007689/76 "2024-10-12T01:29:15Z")
Reminder that sane Republicans held the reigns for many years, even when the country was led by a President teetering on the edge of Alzheimers. Many of them were pretty far right, but they were mostly sane, Sarah Palin, James Watt, Edwin Meese, and Anne Gorsuch being some of the broad group of exceptions. Reminder that the balance of cray-cray fluctuates over time and that one day the Dems will contain more crazy than the GOP. > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > The closest thing to “sane conservatives” would be the Democrats. There are plenty of sane conservatives in the Democratic Party: the Dems are to the right of European center-right governing coalitions after all. Otherwise we’d have won truly universal health care years ago. Then again I’m still retaining my quixotic this-thread-only definition of conservatism whereby the GOP is currently 75% reactionary and 25% coward. Are there decent members of the current GOP? Sure, but they are absorbed by rounding error. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-your-ideal-electorate-what-of-the-voters-would-be-conservatives/1007689.md?page=3)