Oregon's electorate: the most liberal liberals; the most conservative conservatives
We've got a whole lot of folks around the country who are learning about Oregon politics right now -- and trying to figure out what-the-hell we're all about. After all, we decriminalized marijuana, but passed a gay-marriage ban. We'll let you get a doctor's help to commit suicide, but we won't let you pump your own gas. And despite our well-deserved reputation as a liberal enviro-paradise, Al Gore and John Kerry both struggled to win narrowly here.
In short, is this a liberal state or a swing state? A blue state or a purple state?
The blog FiveThirtyEight.com - dedicated to the mathematics of presidential politics - has some answers to that question. (Or as they put it, "Oregon: Swing State or latte-drinking, Prius-driving lesbian commune?")
There are two ways to be a swing state. One is to have a lot of moderates. That doesn't really describe Oregon; a moderate state like Ohio would never pass an assisted suicide law. The other way is to have both a lot of conservatives and a lot of liberals, who happen to roughly balance one another out. Oregon is one such state.
Digging into the math, they explain that Oregon's Kerry voters were the most liberal Kerry voters in the country; while Oregon's Bush voters were the most conservative Bush voters in the country:
Exit polls from 2004 contain a basic question about the ideology (conservative/liberal/moderate) of each voter. We can apply a Likert scale to these responses, assigning 10 points to every liberal, 5 to every moderate, and 0 to every conservative. We will call this result a Liberalness Score. The average voter in Oregon has a Liberalness Score of 4.65, which ties it with Minnesota as the 13th most liberal state in the country. (Massachusetts is the most liberal state at 5.65, and Utah the most conservative at 3.30. Note that only a handful of states have a rating above 5 -- that is, have more self-identified liberals than conservatives.)But here's where it gets interesting. The average Kerry voter nationwide had a Liberalness Score of 6.20 -- just slightly left of center. However, in Oregon, the average Kerry voter was a 7.17. This, as it happens, is the highest score in the country; the Kerry voters in Oregon were more liberal than the ones in Vermont (7.11) or even the District of Columbia (6.97).
Meanwhile, the average Bush voter nationwide had a Liberalness Score of 2.58 -- pretty darn conservative. But in Oregon, the average Bush voter was a 2.01 -- very conservative. And guess what? That is the lowest Liberalness Score for Bush voters anywhere in the country. The Bush voters in Oregon were as conservative as the ones in Tennessee (2.02) or Utah (2.15).
So, we're a swing state with deep shades of red and blue... and not much purple.
Head on over to FiveThirtyEight.com for a bunch of charts that explain it all - plus more context about all of this. Absolutely fascinating stuff.
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May 18, 2008 |
Kari Chisholm | Comments (30 so far)
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Comments
Posted by: James X. | May 18, 2008 3:45:33 PM
Melissa, reposting the same off-topic thing in multiple threads under different names is spamming. Here's my reply when your message was posted by "Kasper."
Posted by: LT | May 18, 2008 5:21:00 PM
Posted by: Melissa | May 18, 2008 2:43:09 PM
If you know what "voters" in Oregon believe, I hope you are working for Tim Hibbitts or Survey USA (or are you working for Moore Information?) because that isa great gift!
Except all it would take is for 2 registered Oregon voters to say "Gee! Why do these people claim to know what we think without asking us? Do they really believe they know anything about people they have never talked to?" to blow your scheme sky high.
Oregonians are not stupid!
Posted by: Larry McD | May 18, 2008 5:26:28 PM
Thanks for the link and the offer of information outside my customary sphere, Kari.
Thanks for reassurance that there are still more horses' hindquarters than horses' necks out there, Melissa, er Kasper, er, nevermind.
Posted by: Kevin | May 18, 2008 7:05:33 PM
My guess is that Oregon is as ornery independent now as it was 40 years ago
My guess is the same as LT's.
What I would love to see would be an analsys of both 2004 and 2008 General Elections and break it down by Dem.GOP and NAV.
Having been a hardcore NAV in Oregon for many years my gut sense is that NAV's are going to wander more within the Liberal/Conservative bell curve more than major party members - mostly because of the reasons that NAVs are NAV rather than members of either major party.
I know conservative NAVs who voted pretty hard Right in 2004 but who are openly intrigued by Obama and may well end up voting for him in November. Where they were at on the Liberal scale in 2004 will probably bear only passing resemblence to where they'll appear to be in 2008.
Maybe, maybe not. But I just don't think that Oregon's traditional independent streak, particularly in NAVs, lends itself to these kinds of Left/Right analysis.
Posted by: Quinn | May 18, 2008 11:30:28 PM
This is a great post Kari. And it's a topic Oregon's Dems should talk about extensively.
Not mentioned yet is analysis of what kind of conservatives and liberals live in Oregon. One quick thought that came to mind as you pointed out the fact that we're so polarized yet we enact seemingly random progressive policies like death with dignity and decriminalized dope is that Oregon's conservatives are almost more Libertarian than they are Republican. The policy pattern may suggest that on certain issues libertarians can agree with liberals which is what drives many of the unique policies Oregon has become known for.
For anyone on the campaign trail in purple or conservative counties, I think experience would back this up. A sizable population of Oregon Republicans seem to be more concerned with taxes, government waste, and government regulation (of people as well as of business) than they are about a lot of the religious extremism and fear-mongering that dominates national Republican rhetoric. They still vote Republican most of the time but they hate what the Neocons have done to the party and especially to the country's finances.
I think this is the biggest opportunity for Oregon Democrats and for national candidates campaigning here. We can speak to this large segment of Oregon Republicans (and conservative NAVs) by emphasizing the libertarian values already encompassed by our party platform. Items like protection of civil liberties, fiscal responsibility, personal integrity, and limiting special interest influence in government (not to mention ending this tragic war).
We won't ever win all Oregon Rs and of course we don't need to. But lock up 10% of the Rs and 55% of the NAVs and we'll dance to an easy victory for Obama.
Though with the fire we're seeing in Oregon Ds, Dem turnout may solve this alone.
Posted by: Kevin | May 18, 2008 11:49:11 PM
Maybe this is neither here nor there but a couple of my older and more conservative NAV friends speak of Obama, whom they are intrigued by, as potentially being another JFK. In fact, I suspect that's at the root of their fascination with him and why they seem less concerned with his more progressive views than they would otherwise be.
Posted by: Tony Kaminski | May 19, 2008 5:02:48 AM
Is our "No Self Serve" law really considered "conservative"? If so, I guess I DO have some conservative values afterall. I will never vote for ANYTHING which puts those jobs, that wonderful convenience, and the necissary social interaction in jeopardy.
Posted by: Bert Lowry | May 19, 2008 5:52:23 AM
I think Quinn has a good point.
Posted by: Norm! | May 19, 2008 11:11:07 AM
Does anyone know who CNN obtained their Oregon poll data? The CNN website only says:
"Exit polls are a survey of selected voters taken soon after they leave their voting place. . . .
So, is CNN's data composed completely of last-minute voters who didn't mail their ballots and waited until election day to drop-off their ballots?
It seems last-minute voters would not represent the average Oregon voter. It seems last minute voters would be less organized ("aaack, where's my ballot?", "we vote today!?", more spontaneous and impulsive ("I don't know. I'll vote for the Red/Blue guy."), possibly more paranoid ("I won't risk Federal USPS employees to handle my vote."), and yet are passionate enough about politics to make a special trip.
Posted by: joel dan walls | May 19, 2008 11:20:51 AM
"Oregon: Swing State or latte-drinking, Prius-driving lesbian commune?"
Well, except for the lesbian-commune bit, this sadly echoes the words of that doofus Buffenbarger, the Machinists' Union leader who campaigned for Hillary Clinton in Ohio.
BTW, I think the question is supposed to refer to left-handed lesbians of color.
Posted by: joel dan walls | May 19, 2008 11:20:58 AM
"Oregon: Swing State or latte-drinking, Prius-driving lesbian commune?"
Well, except for the lesbian-commune bit, this sadly echoes the words of that doofus Buffenbarger, the Machinists' Union leader who campaigned for Hillary Clinton in Ohio.
BTW, I think the question is supposed to refer to left-handed lesbians of color.
Posted by: Chris Lowe | May 19, 2008 11:37:04 AM
I think Quinn has two good points, that Dems should talk about this, and that Dems have an outreach opportunity, and one more questionable one, possibly over-diminishing the role of religiously organized cultural conservatives in Oregon.
Part of the potential outreach to (some) libertarian conservatives exists because the religious-cultural conservatives have been so powerful within the state RP, having essentially taken it over and purged from leadership most of the more moderate wing.
On the other hand, there may be some real limits here, because within conservatism, including in Oregon, there has also been the rise of extreme ideological knee-jerk anti-government libertarianism regarding with which I for one don't want the DP to compromise when it comes to social issues and needs with which government or government + non-profit handle better than markets do.
And it may be that in hard economic times, some of our potential outreach will or should be to the less ideological section of the cultural conservatives who don't benefit from "see any problem, throw a market at it" libertarian elitism.
Posted by: Pete Forsyth | May 19, 2008 12:42:06 PM
Folks around the country are trying to wrap their heads around Oregon politics, and think that somehow terms like "liberal" and "conservative" are going to help them do that? Man, I feel bad for them. Talk about a futile excercise!
(Though I will admit, I'm intrigued by Oregon's position on the chart...)
Posted by: BZ | May 19, 2008 1:00:41 PM
Portland has the fourth-largest per-capita population of gays and lesbians in the country, after San Francisco, Seattle, and Minneapolis. The gay community is highly organized and politically aware due to a succession of anti-gay ballot initiatives that date back to late 1980s. The extreme red/blue polarization is due in part to the constant ballot fights on gay rights issues, and the current sad state of the Republican party is due in part to the slash-and-burn tactics of Lon Mabon, the chairman of the now-defunct OCA. He managed to alienate the Republican leadership as well as the rest of the electorate -- albeit for different reasons.
Posted by: Urban Planning Overlord | May 19, 2008 4:36:15 PM
So, we're a swing state with deep shades of red and blue... and not much purple.
So that explains why the Republicans keep putting up idiots to run in major races.
Posted by: Urban Planning Overlord | May 19, 2008 4:38:12 PM
And why we're about to get a Democratic U.S. Senate candidate who compares well to (shudder) Paul Wellstone.
Not good.
Posted by: Jeff Alworth | May 19, 2008 8:19:59 PM
In stats, what we have in Oregon is known as a "bimodal" distribution. That is, rather than having a standard bell curve, where most voters would be clustered in the moderate region, with extremes tailing out to either side, in Oregon, we have two small bells and no one in the middle.
What's interesting to me is that, while the political dialogue in Oregon is as tough as any state, our sharp liberal/conservative split hasn't cleaved us down the middle in terms of community. You can be anywhere in the state and you'll find that most people identify as Oregonians first and as liberals or conservatives second. And interestingly, those innovative policy solutions we've come up with help define both sides--they make liberals and conservatives both feel more Oregonian-y.
It's a wonderful state, and the kind of place where 75,000 citizens will show up to a candidate--or 3000 will show up to protest a president. Civilly, though, in the Oregon manner.
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Posted by: LT | May 18, 2008 2:30:54 PM
What would be the "liberalness score" of my friends who voted Bush/Hooley in 2004 as incumbents deserving re-election?
My guess is that Oregon is as ornery independent now as it was 40 years ago when a friend was working as a young person in a major news organization (intern or entry-level job straight out of college) and said "had I been a betting person, I could have cleaned up on the 1968 Oregon Primary---no one believed McCarthy would beat Bobby Kennedy!".