The messaging of the parties has been quite different. The Dems portray themselves and their positions as centrist while the Reps unabashedly portray themselves as conservative and any issue they oppose as of the far left. Both do this regardless of how the issue is viewed by the public at large. The people can break 1 to 1 or 2 to 1 and the messaging stays the same.

I think Dave's assessment of where the candidates actually fall is more or less correct and YAJ is correct in stating that the views expressed in the poll have much more to do with social issues than fiscal or defense issues.

I think their relative placement of the various presidential candidates is interesting, too. Note the placement of Romney. I don't see it.

From my point of view all of the candidates should be clustered more tightly together, with Giuliani just about in the center, Romney just a little to his right, and McCain just a little farther right than that. I think that Democrats' positioning of Clinton and Obama is about right but I think that everybody sees more space between Clinton and Giuliani than there actually is. Maybe they know something I don't.

The republican side of that chart probably makes more sense if you viewed it in terms of purely social conservative issues. Or at least that seems to me the best way to get the data to line up with reality. It certainly doesn't match up well if you look at it from a spending, tax cutting, national security or immigration stand point.

Or has the definition of conservative changed, and it now means someone who is ignorant, likes to blow things up and substitutes wrapping oneself in the flag for having any actual ideas?

One of the things I find interesting about the data is how the left views Bush and Huckabee as the most conservative. While they are probably two of the more evangelical oriented in the survey, they aren't necessarily the most conservative. Of course on the flip side, you can make a serious argument that the GOP view of Clinton as being significantly more liberal that Obama has more to do with not liking Clinton than the actual record (where I think Obama is actually more liberal the Clinton).

Looking closer into the data, Clinton leads among every democratic group pre-Iowa except blacks where she was on the wrong side of a 45-47 split (aka it was close). The next closest was a 35 to 31 Hillary lead on those making > $75K, college grads (38 to 32) and 18-49 year old (40 to 34). Every other lead was in double digits, some 2 to 1 leads. Post NH, Obama leads among blacks (52-33), college grads (39-33) and >$75K (44-35). It is now close among 'liberal' (37 - 35 for Clinton) and 18-49 (44-36 Clinton) and Men (41-36 Clinton). Everything else remains double digits for Clinton. Clinton leading among the different constituents should put her where she was before, the most likely winner. Which could cause some serious reconsideration for the one democratic group that Obama has a double digit lead, Blacks. Though it is worth a caveat to note that the N for the Black voters was a very low 92, so things could really be close to the original 45-47 split given the high margin of error associated with such a small N.

What is also interesting is to see the "who has the best chance to win". This is a great question for evaluating how much the respondent can put themselves in others shoes vs what they would like to see. On the republican side, the candidates who came closest to the mythical center point (how people judge themselves) where McCain and Rudy. And the republicans have pretty much reversed from 45-17 Rudy V McCain in Nov. to 16-42 Rudy V McCain in Jan.

The democrats went from 59 Clinton - 14 Obama in Nov. to 46 Clinton - 35 Obama in Jan. But both of those are so far from the center point of voters as to be not in the same league.