Absolutely, when you talk about people in the aggregate you can only talk about tendencies and some place on a Bell curve, just statistical probabilities that don't go far to predict the individual. And I agree that it takes a much larger population, as well as several different populations, before a study can claim statistical validity.

I think that it can be useful to look beneath the confusing surface of the ideology du jour to gain some insight into what motivates people. For example, on the surface it seems anomalous that the "little guys" of the Red states would feel any kinship with a political party long known as the defender of the powerful. But beneath the surface I think you find a commonality between a willingness to follow the authority of a religion and a willingness to follow the authority of an elite.

I've long believed that people gravitate toward idelogies and religions that are a comfortable fit with an existing predisposition. Not hard to understand, really, it's a matter of a belief system that validates one's ego versus one that challenges it; people will generally choose self-affirmation over the pain of self-doubt or criticism.

I make no bones about admitting that I'm more comfortable with the Liberal ideology than the Conservative simply because it expresses good intentions. I don't mean that Conservatism expresses a polar opposite--evil--but rather that its focus on self-interest in disregard of the welfare of others is an "ungood", a lack of something that I value.

Going even deeper, as a descendent of social primates, I find the mlitant individualism of some branches of Conservatism, like Libertarianism, to be a bit unnerving and unnatural. It goes against the instincts, and in some vague way seems a threat against the basic sociability of our species that's brought us this far. In that deep sense, indivdualistic Conservatism is rather radical; and in my preference for wanting to rely on what's been proven to work across a million years, I'm in fact being rather conservative.

But note that all of that is about instincts and deep mental wiring. I didn't analyze my way to having those feelings, I merely observe that they were already there. Your mileage may vary.

So maybe you don't get clarity when you try to dig deeper, you only find that things were not quite as they seemed to be and the layers peel away like an onion; and there's always another secret waiting to be discovered and another paradox to be resolved. We're so fundamentally narcissistic a species that nothing fascinates us more than ourselves.