Gallup Poll: Mississippi is Most Conservative

By Wesley Ernst, Christian Post Correspondent Friday, February 25, 2011

Mississippi has the largest percentage of conservatives in the U.S., according to a Gallup poll of ideological beliefs released Friday.

Several other states that ranked high on the Gallup list of conservative states include Idaho, Alabama, Wyoming and Utah – averaging just below 50 percent.

Notably, the Magnolia state was the first state to exceed 50 percent conservative identifiers in the three years Gallup has gathered ideological identification at the state level.

At the other end of the spectrum, Washington D.C. led the highest numbers of liberals at 41.1 percent. Trailing behind the U.S. capital are the states of Vermont, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Posted on the Gallup website, a color-coded U.S. map reveals a clear majority of conservatives in the Midwestern and Southern region in the continental United States. The map also shows the majority of liberals situated along the coastal northeast and the Pacific west coast.

The poll indicates that conservatives continue to hold a significant margin, indicating that the nation's overall ideological percentage has been mostly stable despite recent changes in party affiliation at the state level in recent years.

Hence, Americans are also more likely to say they are conservative than moderate, according to poll results.

The study was conducted using information from telephone interviews as part of Gallup Daily tracking in Jan. 1 thru Dec. 31, 2010. A random sampling was taken of 182,538 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.