More Financially Secure Are More Likely to Have Consistent Ideological Views By level of financial security, % with political values that are
In our 2014 report on Political Polarization in the American Public, we used a scale based on 10 political values questions about the role of government, the environment, homosexuality and other issues to measure the direction and consistency of a person’s ideological thinking. How a person’s political values line up is strongly related to his or her partisanship, and whether political values line up in a consistent way is strongly related to whether he or she participates in politics or not. The financially secure and insecure differ in both the direction and consistency of their political values.
In general, the financially secure are more likely to have ideologically consistent views, that is, political values that are consistently liberal or consistently conservative across multiple dimensions. The financially insecure are much less likely to have consistent opinions and values: 51% hold a diverse mix of liberal and conservative values, compared with just 24% among the most secure group. People who hold an inconsistent mix of liberal and conservative values are far less likely to be interested in politics, to express a preference between the Democrats and Republicans, to hold strong opinions about the parties or to vote.
More Financially Secure Are More Likely to Have  | Consistent Ideological Views  | By level of financial security, % with political values that are  | Consistently Mostly  | Consistently  | NET %  | Mostly  | liberal Mixed conservative conservative cons lste  | liberal  | Most  | 33  | 18  | 18  | 24  | 25  | 15  | secure  | 2  | 17  | 32  | 15  | 34  | 19  | 15  | 11  | 20  | 25  | 41  | 14  | 9  | 11  | 20  | 44  | 20  | 16  | Least  | secure Least 5  | 9  | 28  | 51  | 10  | 12  | Source: American Trends Panel (wave 7). Survey conducted Sept. goot. 3 2014.  | Ideological cons Istency based on a scale of 10 political values questions  | PEW RESEARCH CENTER 