Understanding America: Values-Based Analysis for Political, Economic, Social,

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Understanding AmericaValues-Based Analysis for
Political, Economic, Social, Cultural Findings

• Paul H. Ray, Ph.D.
• paulhray_at_aol.com
• paul_at_ culturalcreatives.org

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Conventional Population Analysis Uses Demographics

• Weve been doing it for 50-80 years
• Almost a tradition in Govt and Biz
• Its cheap, BUT an ineffective predictor
• Values are much better predictors to real
  behaviors consumers, citizens, voters
• Would demographics say who supports terrorists? -
  Hardly

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Look at Values See 50 years of Cultural Change,
Worldwide

• Floods of new information
• Awareness of Western Lifestyles
• Planetary Ecology Fears
• Jobs, Health and Education Concerns
• Organic food vs Environmental-poisons
• Spiritual traditions from everywhere
• Nuclear, infotech, biotech, nanotech - all go
  from promise to threats

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Values Reflect 50 years of Cultural Change
Worldwide

• Nuclear Fears Worldwide
• Global Awareness of Whole Populations
• Visibility of Western Lifestyles Worldwide
• Willingness to move beyond Welfare State
• Environmental Awareness Goes Ecological
• Worldwide Peace Movement Emerges
• Womens Roles/Views Emerge Worldwide

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Beyond Modern Vs. TraditionalA New Third
Culture in the West

• Womens values and concerns going public for the
  first time in recorded history
• The role of the new social movements and
  consciousness movements in educating the Western
  world over the past 40 years

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Cultural Change from New Social Movements

• Two effects of cultural changes that grew out of
  40 years of new social movements.
• 1. The Cultural Side of the movements gave rise
  to 50 million Cultural Creatives.
• 2. The Political Side has taken us beyond Left
  and Right to 2-dimensional politics.

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1. Massive Research Evidence about the Cultural
Creatives Carriers of cultural change

• 14 years of Values-and-Lifestyles Survey
  Research Focus Groups
• Over 150,000 people surveyed national
  regional, many topics
• 500 values-related focus groups
• 60 in-depth interviews, 4-6 hours each

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The Cultural Creatives-Who They Are

• Theyre literally creating a whole new culture
  for our time
• 26 of adults in United States
• 50 million people
• 30-35 of adults in Western Europe
• 80-90 million people

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1. The Culture Wars 50 Years Ago
50TRADITIONALS
50 MODERNS

Secular, materialist

Conservative, pious

The big city

Small town, country

Hip, up to date

Square, out of date

Style efficiency

Character, reliability

Cary Grant

Jimmy Stewart

Lauren Bacall

June Allyson
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1. There are 3 Subcultures Today

• Traditionals 24.5
• Moderns 49.4
• Cultural Creatives 26.1 Total 100
• Traditionals declined from half to under a
  quarter, but Moderns didnt win...

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ValueGraphics

• A Subculture has different
• Values Most important life priorities
• Worldview How Life works. Whats real.
  What Life is all about
• Lifestyle What to buy. How to live

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1. Cultural Creatives Values

• Ecology, beyond environmentalism
• Planetary awareness
• Social Responsibility Concerns
• Authenticity
• Relationships, Helping others
• Personal Growth, Spirituality
• Feminism

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They Reject Materialism, Status-oriented
Consumption,Most Ads,Most TV, Big
MediaReligious Right
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Demographics Are Almost UselessValues Go Deeper

• CCs a bit more upscale, overall wide range of
  income, education, occupation
• Close to national averages on age, race,
  ethnicity, region
• BUT 60 women overall
• Core group (opinion leaders) are 67 women, or
  21 womenmen
• -) Where are all the good men?

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ORIGINS All the new social movements of past 40
years

• Civil Rights, Social Justice
• Peace (1960 to 1990, and Now, again)
• Womens (to Eco-Fem, Fem-Spiritual)
• Environmental, becoming Ecology
• Planetary Anti-globalization, Hunger
• Personal growth New spirituality
• Alternative Health Care
• Organic Food Natural Everything

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Converging Movements

• 40-80 Overlap in Broad Constituencies of any
  pair of social movements
• A typical Cultural Creative identifies with
  positions of half a dozen movements
• All movements now share the same values and
  worldview the Cultural Creatives
• All reframe the issues in the same ways.
• Local cooperation of activists
• National organizations fail to cooperate

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• 2. New Social Movements that generated Cultural
  Creatives also
• generated New Political Demand
• Anti-Globalization, and now, Anti-War
• Pro-EcologyBeyond Environmentalism
• Ecology over Economy/Limits to Growth
• Alternative Health Care
• Feminism and Womens Perspectives
• Social Justice and Minority Rights
• Organic Food and Natural Everything
• Want to Be ActivistSocially Contribute
• Anti-Corporate Sentiment

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Swing voters
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Statistics 101... on Right vs Left

• When only the tails of a distribution are
  meaningful, but the mean of that distribution
  isnt meaningful...
• then either youve got a bad measure,
• or you need additional measures to explain
  whats going on in the middle.
• A good second dimension should be orthogonal (at
  a right angle) to the first

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Conventional Political Wisdom says These survey
variables should be one Left-Right dimension.
They arent.

• Self-identify as Liberal or Conservative
• Religious Right pro-con
• Civil Liberties pro-con
• Self-identify as Traditional, or not
• Ecological Sustainability pro-con
• National Health Care pro-con
• Big Business pro-con
• Limits to Growth pro-con
• Feminism pro-con

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In fact, the data shows two dimensions

• 1.Liberals vs. Social Conservatives
• Self-identify as Liberal-Conservative
• Religious Right pro-con
• Civil Liberties pro-con
• Self-identify as Traditional, or not
• 2. In Front vs. Business Conservatives
• Ecological Sustainability pro-con
• National Health Care pro-con
• Big Business pro-con
• Limits to Growth pro-con
• Feminism pro-con

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Political North Demographics

• 3670 Million Adult Americans
• 56 Female
• More in Northeast, Upper Midwest, Pacific Coast,
  fewest in Mountain States
• 15 people of color
• 9 Hispanic
• Same as National distribution on Age, Income,
  Education, Occupation

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Political NorthBasic Political Facts

• Among Likely Voters, Political North is
• 45 55 Million Voters
• 56 of all Swing Voters
• Swing Voters 53 of Political North
• 17 Liberal vs. 33 Conservative
• 39 Center, 10 Beyond Left-Right
• 37 Democrat vs. 29 Republican
• 27 Independent, 3 3rd Party

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Political NorthBasic Political Facts

• In the whole adult population, North is
• 18 Liberal vs. 33 Conservative
• 39 Center, 11 Beyond Left-Right
• 39 Democrat vs. 28Republican
• 27 Independent, 3 3rd Party
• Compare to Voters Theyre the same.
• Both Left and Right can call North issues Left,
  but most dont identify with the Left

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Political North Basic Facts

• A low marginal cost to mobilizing them
• Volunteer more often and more hours,
• Give more money to good causes,
• Want to get actively involved
• Involved in more New Social Movement
  constituencies, and believe their worldviews
• Care more about changing the culture
• Want politics to deal more with the real emerging
  problems threatening our future

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A Change in Political Culture

• Identify less with either Left or Right
• Planetary more than nationalistic interests
• Ecological sustainability, not sentimental
  environmentalism, resource management
• Feminism rather than heroic models
• Personal growth over personal ambition
• Condemn corrupt, globalizing mega-corporations
  more than Religious Right
• Get big corporate money out of politics
• Protect a positive future for our children

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Political Norths Voters Show Unmet Political
Demand

• Their most important issues are all outside the
  box to Washington politics
• None of their big issues were in the last 4
  national election campaigns
• This is the equivalent of political market
  failure. Politics abhores a vacuum even more
  than Nature does.
• Lincolns first political party was Whig.
  Remember the Whigs? Parties can die.

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Political Norths Voters Show Unmet Political
Demand

• Unimpressed with the old pols
• Inauthentic, psychologically primitive
• Too much blaming, shaming, posturing,
  hatred/conflict-driven, violence imagery
• Bereft of innovative, or win-win ideas
• Macho, not women-friendly, emotionally
  undeveloped, spiritually empty
• Nationalistic rather than planet-oriented

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Political Norths Voters Show Unmet Political
Demand

• Dont like the political meetings
• Crummy group dynamics, factionalism
• Vicious infighting and power struggles
• Doctrinaire positions and rhetoric
• Self-justifying and psychologically naïve
• Money-driven strategies
• Professionals only poor use of volunteers

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Political Norths Voters Show Unmet Political
Demand

• Dont like the political literature
• No more impressed with Left than Right
• Doctrinaire positions and rhetoric
• Projecting ones evil onto the other side
• Self-justifying and denigrating others
• Old rhetoric no one believes any more
• Not interested in rebuilding community

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Unmet Political Demand The campaign
process doesnt work

• No real way for citizens to get involved in
  professionally run campaigns
• Campaign seasons go on too long too tedious
  to pay continuing attention
• Negativity of news coverage cuts turnout
  personalities and horse races fail to
  cover issues important to voters
• Big-money-power corrupts all politics
• People-power is nowhere

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Political Norths Big Hot Button

• 80 fear their children or grandchildren will
  grow up in a worse world than they did. Deep
  anxiety over the next 20 years.
• Dont believe politicians will address the key
  issues of our longer term future.
• Do believe that Big Business is usually the main
  problem AND that were all implicated.
• See the Lefts favorite solutions as ineffectual,
  and the Rights as harmful.

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What they want Big Themes

• Real innovations for ecological sustainability
• Better education for all the children
• Better health care cleaner food, air and water
  less risk of environmental illness
• Get big corporate money out of politics
• Good hard news political coverage by the media
• More psychological maturity in politics
• Beyond moralizing and economic payoffs, to serve
  their new social and lifestyle concerns
• New rules of the game, and better players

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Battleground StatesSwing Voters

• New Progressives are 58 of Swing Voters in the
  18 Battleground States
• Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Iowa,
  Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New
  Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon,
  Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Washington, Wisconsin
• Underlined 10 Electoral votes

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Similar Kinds of Results from European Values
Surveys

• See
• Paul Abramson Ronald Inglehart,
• Values Change in Global Perspective, University
  of Michigan Press, 1995
• Ronald Inglehart, Modernization and
  Postmodernization Cultural, Economic Political
  Change in 43 Societies, Princeton Univ. Press,
  1997

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• Paul H. Ray, Ph.D.
• Co-Chairman,
• Forum for a Wise Civilization,
• The Global Academy
• 101 Bishop Ct.
• Novato, CA 94945
• 415-897-2894
• paul_at_culturalcreatives.org
• paulhray_at_aol.com