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If you just went by traditional media descriptions of the political battlefield, you’d think that most of the nation has coalesced into two unified and monolithic camps, indelibly red and blue, fighting over a small pool of swing voters to try to get to 50%+1. However, you’ve probably noticed firsthand that the Democratic Party is a “big tent” with a lot of conflicting elements. That’s clear not just from the comments here, where there’s often plenty of, um, robust disagreement, but also when you consider that there are many other parts of the Democratic coalition who may have even greater differences of opinion and who aren’t posting here.

Of course, we’re not alone in our fractiousness; the Republican Party has its own traditional rift between more fiscally oriented country-club Republicans and more red-meat-minded social conservatives, a rift that’s gotten scrambled by the rise of the ostensibly-financially-minded yet even fringier Tea Partiers. There’s also the question of independents, who get depicted in the media either, flatteringly, as sensible, vote-for-the-candidate-not-the-party moderates, or, unflatteringly, as ill-informed, easily manipulated ninnies who make snap decisions based on personality and their sense of their own pocketbook… but that doesn’t even scratch the surface of the diversity of the center.

A very extensive new poll released this week by the Pew Research Center looks deeper into these questions, and tries to categorize voters according to where they might fit within the larger coalitions. Pew breaks respondents down into nine different categories, each representing between 9% and 14% of the general public. Two are reliably Republican (Staunch Conservatives and Main Street Republicans), and three are reliably Democratic (Solid Liberals, Hard-Pressed Democrats, and New Coalition Democrats). Three are “mostly independent,” although Libertarians and Disaffecteds tend to lean right and Post-Moderns tend to lean left. Finally, there’s the category of Bystanders, who are the disengaged party of non-voters. (If you’re wondering where you fit in the scheme, you can take Pew’s typology test, although chances are pretty good that, if you’re reading this at Daily Kos, you’re already one of the 14% of the nation who’s a Solid Liberal.)

Solid Liberals are largely white, and are also the best educated and one of the most affluent of all the typologies. While Solid Liberals have much in common with the other two Democratic groups, such as preferences for a diplomatic rather than aggressive foreign policy and a government that works to aid the poor, there are also key differences, stemming from Hard-Pressed Democrats and New Coalition Democrats being more religious and socially conservative. For instance, while 92% of Solid Liberals say that "Homosexuality should be accepted by society," only 49% of Hard-Pressed Democrats do and 43% of New Coalition Democrats do.

The differences between Hard-Pressed Democrats and New Coalition Democrats are a mix of race and age. Hard-Pressed Democrats skew older, and are a mix of whites and African-Americans. New Coalition Democrats are younger, and have a large Latino component. New Coalition Democrats seem more optimistic about institutions (not just government but business as well; only 38% of New Coalition Democrats say, "Business corporations make too much profit" as opposed to 79% of Hard-Pressed Democrats). Hard-Pressed Democrats take a much dimmer view of immigration (only 13% of them say, "Immigrants today strengthen our country," compared with 70% of New Coalition Democrats).