The Most Liberal State in the Nation
It seems like hardly a day goes by that I don't hear that California is the most liberal state in the nation, or Massachusetts, or Vermont....
So I thought I'd take a hard look at the question today. I started by looking at the last three presidential elections, and the percentage of the vote that the Democratic contender got. For 2000, I added together the Gore and Nader vote.
The results were not terribly surprising.
In 2000, the states with the highest percentage of Gore & Nader voters were as follows: Rhode Island (67%), Massachusetts (66%), New York (64%), Hawaii (62%), and Connecticut (60%).
In 1996, the states giving the highest percentages to Bill Clinton were as follows: Massachusetts (61%), Rhode Island (60%), New York (59%), Hawaii (57%) and Illinois (54%).
In 1992, the states giving the highest percentages to Bill Clinton were as follows: Arkansas (53%), Maryland (50%), New York (50%), Illinois (49%) and West Virginia (48%).
If we average each state's ranking for the three elections, we find that the five most liberal states are: New York (3), Massachusetts (3.3), Rhode Island (4), Hawaii (4.7) and Maryland (4.7). It is a pretty sharp drop from there to Illinois, whose average ranking was 6.7 in terms of support to the Democratic candidates.
