SURPRISE ANALYSIS: ALL 50 STATES ARE ACTUALLY SHIFTING TOWARD CONSERVATISM?

The American public is apparently as conservative today as it has been in 50 years, according to Cornell political scientist Peter Enns, citing both his own work and work done by Vanderbilt professor Larry M. Bartels. In fact, based on the joint efforts of Enns and Julianna Koch, all 50 states have experienced a shift towards conservatism. This revelation starts with Bartels. See, Bartels examines James Stimson’s measure of public support for various government programs (it spans from 1950 to 2012). Taking it a step further, Koch and Enns measured policy moods for each state from the 1950s to 2010. “The figure below presents one illustration of this pattern. Here we compare the policy mood in each state in the early 1960s (hollow dots) and in the early 2000s (solid dots),” Enns writes, explaining their findings. “Higher values indicate a more conservative policy mood. In each instance, the solid dot is to the right of the hollow dot, suggesting that the public’s policy mood has moved in a conservative direction in every state. Furthermore, most of these increases are statistically significant,” he adds.  More