Conservatives have no such consensus.
http://www.truth-out.org/america-not-politically-conservative-you-think66915According to their research, some people genuinely know what it means to be a conservative in the current political debate and indeed express matching preferences across all issues. But these "constrained conservatives" (as Ellis and Stimson call them) account for only 26 percent of all self-identified conservatives.
More common are the "moral conservatives" (34 percent), who think of themselves as conservative in terms of their own personal values, be they social or religious. And they are indeed right-leaning on social, cultural and religious issues. But they also like government spending on a variety of programs and generally approve of government interventions in the marketplace, hardly making them true conservatives.
And still others, "conflicted conservatives" (30 percent), are not conservative at all on the issues. But they like identifying themselves as conservatives. To them, it somehow sounds better. "They like the word," explained Ellis. Or at least, they like it better then their other choices in the traditional self-identification questionnaire: moderate and liberal.
Finally, a smaller group of self-identified "conservatives" (10 percent) could be classified as libertarian — conservative on economic issues, liberal on social issues.
Self-identified liberals, on the other hand, are consistently liberal on all the issues, according to Ellis and Stimson. Two-thirds of liberals fit into the category of "constrained liberals," who pick the label because it actually describes their worldview.
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