Wednesday, October 09, 2013

The Republican Mind

Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner is conducting an ongoing study called the “The Republican Party Project” for the liberal nonprofit organization Democracy Corps.  Thomas B. Edsall reports some of his findings.

One of the key factors pushing Republicans to extremes, according to Greenberg’s report, is the intensity of animosity toward Obama. This animosity among participants in all six focus groups is reflected in . . . a “word cloud” of focus group references to the president, with the size of each word in the cloud proportional to the frequency with which it was used. . . .

 . . . a second word cloud generated by Greenberg’s data showing which words came up most often in all six [Republican] focus groups:
 
 
Edsall's full report is worth reading: "Anger Can Be Power."