This paper appears to use the term conservative to mean right wing. That's incorrect. You can be left wing and be a conservative; in fact, it's rather common

This paper appears to use the term conservative to mean right wing. That's incorrect. You can be left wing and be a conservative; in fact, it's rather common in American today. Looking the three perception statements on page 11, agreement means you agree to some rather radical change. A true conservative would disagree with all three questions due to that. Compared to the true conservative, a conservative right winger would be more likely to agree with the last, and a conservative left winger would be more likely to agree with the first two; however, they might not support any of them because they might be too radical. For example, I know many left wingers that support health care reform but don't support socialized medicine, so they'd likely disagree with "Implement a universal healthcare program to guarantee coverage to all Americans, regardless of income". That leads to issues with the results. If a conservative left winger says no to the first two, s/he appears more right wing than s/he is. On the other hand, if they are using conservative correctly, then it appears they are using liberal incorrectly. Liberal isn't the opposite of conservative. Radical is the opposite of conservative. There are radical right wingers that support same sex marriage who come to that idea from libertarianism. The charts on specific questions are great, because they remove the terminology issue I'm raising, but when they identify the politician as liberal or conservative, it comes right back. I'm sure the authors know this stuff better than I do, so I suspect I'm misunderstanding their work. I know one of the authors posted here; I'd appreciate if he'd or someone else could clarify what I've got wrong.