Pew's One-Dimensional Ideology Scale

Fascinating chart from the Pew Center (via Yglesias) on voter perceptions of the candidates:


There's so much one could do with this. Yes, I know it is "linear," but that is the way voters think--how else to evaluate a warmonger who likes dresses? How else explain Huckabee and Bush, at opposite poles on the likeability scale, huddled together on the same datapoint?

I'm particularly impressed by the demonstration that Republicans see Hillary as far more liberal than Democrats do. I assume it is a triumph of talk radio and talking-head TV, and pretty much a flat contradiction to Bruce Bartlett's argument that Bill Clinton was a much more fiscally responsible president than George Bush is (link; cf. link). But you can match it with the datum that they see Mitt Romney as pretty conservative: as I've said too many times, I think he is far too insincere for that, and that he will abandon his conservative allies when convenience dictates just as much as he will the liberal.

Yglesias says it is "it's interesting that all voters seem to classify the contenders almost entirely on the basis of cultural matters. " True in part, although I suppose if the voters went the whole way with that, they'd have Rudi at the far left end. And voters have a maddening way of crossing category lines: recall that McCain, perhaps the most hawkish of Republicans (but they are all hawkish)--McCain does best among Republicans most disaffected with the war.