Are Small States More Conservative?

During my presentation at the Social Science Research and Instruction Council’s 27th Annual Student Research Conference at San Francisco State University in April 2003, the concern was raised that small states tend to be more conservative than large states, and that that placing small states at the beginning of the presidential nomination process would favor conservative candidates over progressives.

First of all, we must be clear on what we mean by small. We are not talking about just Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming. In the context of the Graduated Random System, small means any state possessing up to eight congressional districts. This includes states such as Arizona, Maryland, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, each with populations of about five million people. It also includes the Democratic strongholds of Connecticut, Hawaii, and Rhode Island. Secondly, this eligibility pool includes not just states, but overseas possessions whose ethnicities and politics are quite distinct from that of the American heartland (where for all intents and purposes the Republican Party does not exist), as well as the District of Columbia (hardly a bastion of conservatism). Once again referring to Table 3, the first round eligibility pool has a population of 88.5 million people, or 31.5% of the total population.

There is evidence that this first block of states and territories is no more conservative than the United States as a whole. Table 11 lists the population of each state, the total number of state and federal legislators in each of the two major parties, and the parties’ percent share of the total. Multiplying these percentages with the population figures gives a measure of the political power wielded by each party.* Finally, these weighted measures can be added up for all states eligible to vote in Interval 1 through Interval 4 (when all states become eligible). The results are shown in Figure 26. It turns out that party strength from one block of states to the next is remarkably uniform, varying by less than two percentage points.

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