PRINCETON, NJ — Mississippi remains the most conservative state in the union, and, along with Utah, Wyoming, and Alabama, is one of four states with 50% or more of its population identifying as conservative. At the other end of the ideological spectrum, 40% District of Columbia residents and 30% of Massachusetts residents identify as liberal; all other states have a liberal population of 26% or less.
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As has been the case in recent years, Americans overall are significantly more likely to identify as conservative than as liberal. Forty percent of more than 218,000 adults 18 and older interviewed in Gallup tracking in 2011 said they were conservative, 36% were moderate, and 21% liberal. Only in the District of Columbia and Massachusetts did liberals outnumber conservatives.
Politics in America today varies widely across the states and regions of the country, and ideology is no exception. Mississippi and Massachusetts are the two states that provide the most extreme contrast, with 53% of Mississippians identifying as conservative and 11% identifying as liberal, while 29% of Massachusetts residents are conservative and 30% are liberal.
More generally, the 10 most conservative states in 2011 were in the South (Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee), the Midwest (Oklahoma and Nebraska), and the West (Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho). None were on the East or West Coast.
By contrast, all of the 11 most liberal states in 2011 were coastal — the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Connecticut in the East, and Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, and California in the West.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/152459/Mississippi-Conservative-State-Liberal.aspx
