Economic and social ideology

It is sometimes said that the left has a natural advantage on economic issues, while the right has a natural advantage on social issues.  Of course, this is not true for every individual issue.  However, the general image of the left is that it's interested in helping the poor and middle class, and the general image of the right is that it's interested in helping business, especially big business. People who are middle class and below are more numerous, plus even many affluent people regard inequality as undesirable.  For social issues, the image of the left is that it's interested in helping minorities and "outsiders," while the image of the right is that it's interested in defending traditional majority values.  So the left is with the majority on economics, and the right is with the majority on social issues. 

People have been distinguishing between economic and social ideology at least since the 1950s, but it wasn't until 1999 that Gallup thought to ask people about their ideology on economic and social issues separately ("thinking about economic issues" and then "thinking about social issues").  They asked these questions once or twice a year until 2015.  Here are the average responses, on a scale of 1 (very conservative) to 5 (very liberal).



Self-rated opinions on social issues moved to the left, while self-rated opinions on economic issues went up and down without any trend (this makes sense, given that opinions on some important social issues did move to the left).  Opinions on social issues started out slightly to the left of opinions on economic issues, and because of the different trends, the gap widened.  That is, in terms of self-rated ideology, the left does better on social issues, not economic issues.  Another striking thing is that ratings, especially on economic issues, moved to the right in 2009-10--that is, during the recession (the 2008 survey was taken in may, when the economic was slowing, but not in a serious recession). 

Why doesn't the left do better on economic issues than social issues?  The perception of liberals as more interested in the middle class and poor is found in other surveys.  However, another popular meaning of "liberal" is free-spending, and a popular meaning of "conservative" is cautious or careful.  I think that's what gives conservatives their relative advantage on economics--many people think "it might be nice, but we can't afford it now," especially during a recession.  Of course, a recession is the best time for spending according to Keynesian economics, but as Paul Krugman has noted, Keynesian economics doesn't seem to have had much impact on popular thinking. 

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]