Ask Lemmygrad

Are you speaking to US partisan politics here? As in, are you referring to republicans when you say "right" and democrats when you say "left"?

I ask, because the political right in general is about centralization of rights, and the left is about decentralization of rights... i.e. should the rights you have be a matter of state, of law, or should they be inherent in you as an individual entity.

US politics has absolutely fucked that concept up, across the board.

Republicans want the state to dictate morality, but want everything else left to individuals. That is to say, that depending on what exact issue you put on the table for discussion, they can be very right wing or very left wing... and likewise with democrats...

Republicans are incredibly authoritarian minded (right) when it comes to abortion. Democrats are very authoritarian minded (right) when it comes to gun rights. And flip flop that to both sides being very individualistic (left) if you reverse it.

The short answer is that if you're referencing US politics with this question, nobody has done any fucking research whatsoever. Democrats claim to be the left, and demand authoritarian solutions to most problems (race, wealth inequality, crime...). Republicans claim the right, and want an absence of government on most things. It's absurd that either claims left, right, liberal, conservative, etc... they're all over the map on these scales... the only consistency you'll find is that they both abhor the other and will more often than not go to unreasonable lengths to disagree (this appears as face value to be a republican trait, but I promise you, I will be determined by a not small number of people to be a Ford F950 driving redneck trump fan simply because I didn't cast a distinctly blue hue with this comment... at best I'll be declared "enlightened" in a very facetious manner... I'm not a Smurf, so I must be a redneck...).

But offhand, id say the republicans do a lot more research. It's not very good quality, and it tends to favor things like the Bible or cherry picked "fact", but they're definitely more ubiquitous about it :)