The Most Democratic & Republican States

As most of us political junkies know, there are some states that can be counted on, regardless of what is happening in the country, to vote for a particular political party. Even though the country is fairly evenly divided between the political parties, with 44% of population being Democrats (or leaning that way) and 40% being Republicans (or leaning that way), there are states that almost always vote Democratic and others that almost always vote Republican.

The Gallup organization has released a pretty accurate poll determining just which states these are, and which way they lean. They surveyed information they had gathered over the first six months of this year in interviewing 177,600 adults. The long period covered by the survey meant that individual incidents (such as the debt ceiling debate or the killing of bin Laden) would not color the ratings, and the large sample gave the numbers for each state a 3 point or less margin of error.

To determine whether a state lean toward Democrats or Republicans, they took the state's approval rating for the Democratic Party and subtracted the state's approval rating for the Republican Party. This meant that the higher positive number a state had the more Democratic it was, and the higher negative number it had the more Republican it was. Here are the top ten Democratic and Republican states (with D.C. included):

DEMOCRAT
1. District of Columbia..........+68
2. Hawaii..........+24
3. Maryland..........+22
4. Connecticut..........+20
5. New York..........+20
6. Massachusetts..........+20
7. Vermont..........+17
8. Rhode Island..........+16
9. Illinois..........+15
10. Delaware..........+14

REPUBLICAN
1.Utah..........-32
2. Idaho..........-29
3. Wyoming..........-27
4. Alaska..........-19
5. North Dakota..........-18
6. Kansas..........-16
7. Nebraska..........-14
8. Alabama..........-13
9. Montana..........-11
10. South Carolina..........-9

I was a little surprised not to find Texas in the Republican top ten and California in the Democratic top ten, since those states have pretty reliably voted for those parties in the last few elections. According to Gallup, Texas is a -6 and California is a +13. If your state is not listed you can go here to find its rating. The most equal states are:

Virginia..........0
Mississippi..........0
Colorado..........-1
Georgia..........+2
Missouri..........-2
Arizona..........-2
Arkansas..........-2