Ranking of 21st-century elections from most to least liberal in orientation

[pbrower2a]

This includes Presidential and midterm elections, but it may suggest something about all sorts of Congressional as well as Presidential elections. It does rate states from 2000 only... but 1996 was the last Presidential election, perhaps for a very long time, in which Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Tennessee, and West Virginia would vote for a Democratic nominee for President. Since then Arizona, Colorado, and Virginia, which all usually voted Republican in close elections from 1952 on, have voted for Democrats and Colorado and Virginia now look solid D. Only one Senator from any one of those states that voted Democratic for the last time for Bill Clinton in 1996 has a Democratic Senator.


My estimate, and nothing else:
 
Years for voting beginning in 2000, based on liberal-to-conservative:

2008
2006
2018
2012
2020
2016
2000
2004
2002
2014
2010

If you have some other idea of how to order those years, then tell me. Better yet, I am starting a thread in the Electoral Trends area, where your opinions might be relevant as those seat-of-the-pants guesses are over twenty years and eleven elections.

How could 2008 have the most liberal electorate and 2010 the most conservative, pro-corporate electorate? Liberal-leaning voters of 2008 did not come out to vote in 2010.
   

[Skill and Chance]

I don't think it's reasonable to compare midterms to presidential years.  Midterm elections are less ideological in general and tend to be either "I'm mad at the world and blaming the incumbent" or "Thank you for getting us through this crisis."

[OSR stands with Israel]

2008
2020
2018
2012
2006
2016
2000
2014
2002
2010
2004

[sting in the rafters]

By gap between conservatives and liberals per exit polls from each year:


2000:29-20
2002:Can't find exact data but NYT has it as smaller than 2004
2004:34-21
2006:32-20
2008:34-22
2010:42-20
2012:35-25
2014:37-23
2016:35-26
2018:36-27
2020:38-24 (though this may be skewed by more libs voting by mail)

From this metric, the election with the highest proportion of liberals were 2000, 2016 and 2018 with a 9-point gap. The highest gap in favor of conservatives was 2010 with a 22-point gap. Most may be surprised to see such low liberal turnout in 06 and 08, however what needs to be understood is that Democrats did historically well with moderates and conservatives those cycles. On the other hand, they lost in 2000 and 2016 because they did poorly with moderates in those cycles.

[dw93]

On balance:

2008
2006
2018
2020
2016 (Trump really bucked the Republican orthodoxy that year, unfortunately he governed very much within it overall)
2012
2000
2014
2002, 2004
2010