Liberals and Conservatives - Social and Economic breakdown

courtesy Andrew Gelman, David Cook of Columbia University and Samantha "Sam" Cook now of Google
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2008/06/ranking_states.html
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/

shows the "average economic and social ideology of adults within each state ... scaled so that negative numbers are liberal and positive are conservative""

In the graph below, each state is shown twice: the avg social and economic ideologies of Democrats in the state are shown in blue, the avgs for Republicans in red.



Democrats are much more liberal than Republicans on the economic dimension: Democrats in the most conservative states are still much more liberal than Republicans in even the most liberal states. On social issues in any given state, the average Republican is more conservative than the average Democrat.