One of the central tenets of the Emerging Democratic Majority theory, at least as defined by John Judis and Ruy Teixeira, is that American attitudes on critical issues are becoming more liberal.  Hence the finding of their study that, on a 400-point scale with 400 being the most liberal and 0 being the most conservative, Americans average about a 209 -- slightly to the left of center.

The only problem with this theory is that, to claim the country is shifting to the left, you first need to establish a baseline.  Teixeira's study doesn't have any baseline off of which to operate.  It merely asks its questions, then concludes that America is now center-left.  Of course, without such a baseline (i.e., a study of American attitudes in, say, the 1980s, at conservatism's height), it is impossible to say with any certainty whether America has moved right, left, or stayed the same.

Fortunately, we do have studies with such baselines, and they are consistently showing little to no net movement to the left.  Back in late May, David Paul Kuhn examined the results of the Pew survey from 1987 to the present, and found that there was no movement to the left in American's political views.

Gallup has the latest entry in this debate.  It finds that, by a 2:1 margin, more Americans describe their political views as having become more conservative than liberal.  Interestingly, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents alike describe their views as having moved to the right.

At the micro level, we see similar shifts from 2004 to the present day.  On a range of domestic issues, from health care to guns to the environment, the public is noticeably more conservative.  The two more "liberal" viewpoints -- a decreased desire to see lower immigration and an increase in people who want the current health care system to change -- are actually inconclusive.  The immigration issue cuts across partisan and ideological lines, and it may be (and would make sense) that more conservatives would favor a system of tax credits to fund health care, rather than the federal government.

On values issues it is more of a mixed bag.  Substantially fewer believe that the government should promote traditional values, and substantially more describe themselves as "pro-life."  Overall, however, there has not been substantial movement here.

On government power, there are similar results.  The percentage of people who think taxes are too high has dropped for points, but the percentage who think that government has too much power has shot up 10 points, to 52%.

Finally, on defense, supermajorities believe that defense spending is too low or about right, and a similar number believe that Afghanistan was not a mistake.  The percentage of people who believe that Iraq was not a mistake is up a tick from 2008, though it is down substantially from 2004.

Taken as a whole, the Gallup data show a country that has not moved much to the left, and if anything is somewhat more conservative than it was in 2004.

So what then to make of the election of 2008, the oversized majorities granted to Democrats in Congress, and the election of the most liberal (or progressive, if you will) President in several years?

The answer is simple:  American voters are largely nonideological, pragmatic voters.  They do have some basic political values, and if a politician is too far outside of those values, he will not be elected.  But those values are broad enough and internally inconsistent enough that most politicians can offer the voters something.

Instead, what Americans want is government that works.  And Republicans somewhat spectacularly failed to provide this before the elections in 2006 and 2008.  So Americans turned to the Democrats to fix things.  If Democrats make government at least seem to work, they will govern for a long time.  If not, the country will return Republicans to power.

At any rate, the evidence for an emerging progressive and/or Democratic majority grows increasingly scarce.  The evidence for a pragmatic, essentially non-partisan, essentially non-ideological electorate continues to grow.