In the 14 states where we've broken out ideology within parties this year, conservatives range from 78% of Republican voters in Arkansas to 63% in New Jersey.
What does that mean? Pretty much any moderate Republican should be on notice if they get a well funded conservative primary challenge...the will of the voters is there but as with anything in politics it comes down to money. So far we have not seen enough financial resources there to allow for a systematic targeting of moderate Republicans in primaries...but in the places where the Club for Growth and others have picked their battles they've been pretty successful. It will be interesting to see if this occurs on a much broader scale next year.
Here's the state by state data:
| State | % of Republicans who are conservatives |
| | 78 |
| | 77 |
| | 76 |
| | 76 |
| | 74 |
| | 73 |
| | 73 |
| | 68 |
| | 68 |
| | 67 |
| | 67 |
| | 67 |
| | 64 |
| | 63 |
This shouldn't be all that surprising. You and others have discussed how because the Republican brand is so toxic, many Republicans don't call themselves Republicans anymore which is why Independents have become so much more conservative. This is just a corollary of that phenomenon.
ReplyDeleteI think it might be worthwhile to put some thought into polling the entire voting populace as to the "conservative" idealogy.
ReplyDeleteOne of the biggest things happening is that libertarians and "small government" loving members of many lesser known parties as well as independents are tuning into the same wavelength as far as their distrust of the prevailing Washington winds.
It would seem probable that the moving away of people from the Republican party is not an equal moving to the Democratic party, so might be a good idea to find out where those disaffected Republicans are moving? You may find there are a lot more conservatives/strict constitutionalists than you think.