Where is the political center?

A recent study of the 2016 election by the Voter Study Group sheds light on where the true political center in America might lie.

The researchers polled 8,000 voters in 2012 and 2016, asking them questions on their views on virtually all the hot button issues in the election: attitudes towards immigration, racial and religious minorities, trade, medicare, pride in America, moral issues, gender discrimination, inequality, government regulation and whether they thought the political system was rigged.  In analyzing the data, they constructed an intriguing cross-plot showing attitudes towards social liberty versus attitudes towards economic liberty.  I've annotated their diagram below:

Naturally, Republicans are in red and Democrats in blue in this plot with third party voters in yellow.  There are two clear clusters in the graph but it is interesting that they are not in opposite corners.  Democratic voters tend to be both social liberals (in favor of abortion, gay & transgender rights, etc.) and economic liberals (high tax, supporting government regulation of the economy, etc.).  Republican voters tend to be more socially conservative (opposing abortion, supporting religious freedom, etc.) but are not as strongly economic conservative as media stereotypes might suggest.  Since this is a plot of the 2016 election results, it also shows Democratic voters captured by the Trump campaign, likely in the socially conservative / economically liberal quadrant.  It is interesting that the sparsest region is the social liberal / economic conservative quadrant - the area the Libertarian Party has staked out.   

Now - if you were to position a third party to capture voters who were not strong Democrats or Republicans, where would you put it?  It appears from this study that there are a lot of socially conservative and economically liberal voters out there looking for a home.

-- Mike Power