Read (and posted on DU in "Good Reads") an article earlier today

[PETRUS]

It was a review of a book about the Tea Party. Here are a couple of quotes:

<snip>

"Falling real wages, rising inequality, and unresponsive government have all fueled the Tea Party’s popularity, even if its false solutions would intentionally exacerbate such problems ... individuals may strongly support welfare programs like Medicare or Social Security—as most of the public does—but oppose “welfare” ...

A similar pattern seems to apply to public opinion on a wide range of issues. Most of the public thinks workers should have more income and power, but is more ambivalent toward the idea of unions ... the public overwhelmingly agrees with the Occupy Wall Street movement’s goals of reducing inequality, taxing the rich to fund social programs, and ending corporate domination of government, but stated support for the Occupy movement itself is lower"

<snip>

I also read a study a few weeks ago. The authors analyzed data comparing differing countries (that hold elections) and looked for correlations between public policy and the structure of government. One of the chief findings was that countries with proportional representation always had policies further left than other forms (like ours, for example).

These things suggest to me Americans are probably further left than the rate of self-identification as "liberals" or "conservatives" might lead one to believe, and that the structure of our political environment - single member district representation; first past the post, winner-take-all voting; the two-party system - is at least partly responsible.