Exactly asking would tell us more, and make us more confident in what we learned, but it would make for a very cumbersome poll, and also we would lose some info about the overall impressions about the words/concepts (although you could do both polls in parallel, randomly selecting which from your overall pool)
You have a point (which I agreed with multiple times, and in the past have made myself), that the words cover a wide spectrum of ideas. But your "otherwise you know next to nothing about beliefs" is wrong. You just know less, not next to nothing. Ideas about many issues fit in to "conservative" or "liberal" in the US. Seemingly unrelated ideas have a strong correlation along conservative or liberal lines. Belief that we should not increase spending as much on social programs correlates with opposition to gun control, support for capital punishment, opposition to the bailout of GM and Chrysler, opposition to tax increases... Similarly support for higher taxes for the rich correlates with a more pacifist version of foreign/military policy, support for some degree of gun control, support for more spending on social programs, support for "the public option" or straight "single payer"...
There are clearly understood groupings of ideas in the US labeled "conservative" and "liberal". That doesn't mean that everyone in each camp supports all the ideas associated with that camp, but support a few, or identify with one group, and the chances are far greater that you support some other idea associated with that group, even if some of the ideas, when looked out in isolation, seem to have little or no connection with each other.
Because of that "conservative" and "liberal" are still very meaningful concepts, even though they are both vague. |
