Alcon
Atlas Superstar
Posts: 30,866
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« on: February 06, 2014, 02:27:14 PM » |
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« edited: February 06, 2014, 02:32:31 PM by Grad Students are the Worst »
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+1 to the idea that Alaska's libertarianism is overrated.
Alaska's electorate is full of lower middle class suburbanites. I'm sure they have their libertarian leans, but I doubt they have them at exceptional rates. A lot of Republicans support pot legalization, I think because fewer of them have religious prohibitions against doing so than with our cultural issues. Supporting pot legalization doesn't mean much if you're basically a traditionalist on any cultural policy that touches on your personal views. I really doubt the Republicans in suburban Anchorage are actually "libertarian" in any meaningful sense, and the libertarianness of hard-scrabble rural areas is probably overestimated too. I would imagine there are a lot of socially conservative Democrats in hard-scrabble rural areas (since hard-scrabble rural areas tend to be poor), more than hardcore "to each his own" Republicans. That's especially true considering how many of the Democrats in rural Alaska are native -- not that natives are socially conservative (Native Americans on the mainland are probably more socially liberal than whites), but they're certainly less socially liberal than they are Democratic.
Alaska may have more social-left/economic-right voters than vice-versa, but I don't think it's by much, and I don't think it's anywhere near enough to make for a social-liberal majority.
Just because someone expresses a hands-off attitude doesn't mean they're "libertarian." Plenty of "hands-off" rural voters see social liberalism as an imposition on their right to live their traditional way of life. "Get away from me" is not synonymous with "to each their own."
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