Mapping American Four-Quadrant Political Ideology

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The even split of Republicans tells you all you need to know of why Donald Trump got nominated while running to the left on issues like Social Security.

The present alignment is based on culture/Religion and that necessarily means that there are a large number of people in the GOP who are not represented by the Paul Ryan agenda.

The fact that big money continues to press this and that every populist movement ever has been coopted by big money and its mouth piece think tanks/pressure groups, is all you need to know to understand why the GOP is forever in a state of rebellion.

The GOP is not a limited Gov't party and it frankly never has been, it is a cultural conservative and semi-nationalist party with about half its members who prefer smaller gov't and half want a bigger government.

I am reminded of back in 2008 when Blaine Luerkmeyer and Brett Guthrie won, both were not the favored candidate of the Club For Growth. Their preferred candidate in both instances lost to more populist conservatives in these more rural parts of Missouri and Kentucky. It was the tea party that reversed this trend and led to the nominations of more fiscally conservative candidates and yet that was largely (at least at first) a suburban phenomenon, whereas the GOP has become more rural and working class since 2008 so in that regards these manifestations of populism make sense considering who comprises the GOP these days, as illustrated in the OP.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Interesting.  Not sure that I totally buy the size of the commutarian group- and I'm not a huge fan of 2 axis charts.  Sometimes they have an agenda (e.g. the political compass trying to say that the Democrats are conservative or libertarian organizations trying to push people into the bottom right), but regardless, they are not super descriptive for an ideology.

The part I really do find interesting is that this suggests that conservatism as an ideology is actually rooted in the suburbs and is not inversly correlated to education at all.  I've been saying that for a long time.  I imagine that the same actually applies for the backbone of religious-based social conservative movements.  Even if it's not everybody in well-off suburbs, movements like these tend to have their most fervent support in suburbs.  For example, I guarantee you that evangelicals who actually don't drink, save themselves for marriage, avoid cursing, and the like come from a lot less rural and "white working class" backgrounds than a lot of people assume.

Was this in dispute?

The problem is that subsequent generations in suburbs aren't "conservatives", or aren't conservative enough to maintain political power at the state or county level.

Lets take a hypothetical state with a break down of 45% suburbs, 35% urban and 20% rural.

Lets say those suburbs vote Democratic 52%, the rurals go 70% Republican and Democrats win 75% of the urban.

Even at those levels, the Republican vote in said state would be overwhelmingly suburban. 45*48 = 21.6%  20*70 = 14%.

This is a point that RinoTom makes a lot, that by necessity Republicans have to get most of their votes in the suburbs, but the problem is they either can no longer command majorities in those suburbs or their majorities are too weak to offset the urban vote even when combined with the rural population.

This is caused by three main factors:
1. Generational Displacement
2. New demographics moving in who feel left out by dominant party
3. Party alienation.

Typically a combination of one and/or two produce a feedback loop with the national party that leads to number three.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I think LA might be a mistake in the map above unless I am reading the numbers wrong.


Louisiana   31.5   28.3   37.3   2.8
Texas   33.3   31.1   31.8   3.8

Both are the same color though.


Also that map looks very familiar, matches with the trend maps in many places.