It’s hard to find a story of “when opposites attract” in politics these days, but here you go.
Gallup has ranked Massachusetts and Maryland the most Democratic states in the country, based on statistics that take into account political party ID and the leanings of state residents in 2014. Both states have a Democratic edge in excess of 20 percentage points, placing them further to the left than such liberal bastions as California.
The oddity? Check out the states’ governors:
Charlie Baker (Mass.) and Larry Hogan (Md.) were two examples of the GOP’s electoral success in 2014 that didn’t involve Congress. Both men captured governorships in states that President Obama carried with at least 60 percent of the vote in 2012. And each secured key support across the aisle, including endorsements for Baker from several Democratic mayors.
Rounding out the top five of Gallup’s most Democratic states are Rhode Island, New York and Vermont.
Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, South Dakota and Montana are the five states with the largest Republican edge. The first three are substantially more GOP than Massachusetts and Maryland are Democratic; still, Montana is the only one of the Republican bunch to have a Dem governor.
“Since 2008, there has been a significant movement away from the Democratic Party both at the national level and in many states,” Gallup notes. “Democrats still maintain a modest advantage in national partisanship, partly because they have an advantage in some of the most highly populated states such as California, New York and Illinois. At the same time, other large states like Florida and Texas are competitive, with Florida showing a slight Democratic edge and Texas a slight Republican one.”
Gallup added that the GOP’s struggles in highly populous states is a continued challenge for Republican presidential hopefuls. The last Republican to win California and Illinois, for instance, was George H.W. Bush in 1988. Not since 1984 has a GOP candidate taken New York in a general election, when Ronald Reagan cruised to a second term, losing only Minnesota and Washington, D.C.
The most heavily populated states that Gallup found to be either solidly Republican or leaning Republican, in fact, are Tennessee and Indiana — just 16th and 17th in terms of population.
The most competitive (evenly split) states? Those include Florida, Ohio and Virginia — three places voters again will hear plenty about come 2016.
