The clock is ticking on the upcoming congressional election. House and Senate Republicans are facing some rough headwinds in these final days, including the president’s negative job approval and their slippage with voters on the question of who can better handle economic issues. There may not be many cards left for the GOP to play, even with their cash advantages. 

But in all the talk of a blue wave, which may yet come, one crucial factor has been all but ignored by the commentariat and the media. The best card in the hand Republicans have been dealt is their positioning ideologically with voters — their proximity to what remains a center-right electorate despite all the buzz about the rise of socialism in America.

In a number of columns, I’ve talked about the negative brand images of both parties. To help measure how voters see themselves ideologically and vis-à-vis Republicans and Democrats, our firm developed an analytical scale that we’ve used for 20 years, most recently in our Winning the Issues survey (Sept. 12–16). 

We asked 1,000 voters to place themselves on a scale of 1 to 9 —1 being very liberal, 5 being moderate and 9 being very conservative. When averaged together, voters put themselves at 5.38, a center-right position. 

The data shows some very liberal voters will put themselves at 1, and we also see some conservatives self-describe at 9. But when taken together, voters in this country still see themselves overall as center-right. 

We also asked respondents how they view Republicans and Democrats and asked them to place each party on the scale. The electorate put Republicans to the right at 6.91, Democrats at 3.6 to the left. So........

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