A series of just-released analyses from CPAC Foundation’s Center for Legislative Accountability (CLA) reveals that Democrats are, by voting data, more committed to liberal legislation than Republicans are to conservative legislation. The comprehensive study examined all 7,400 state lawmakers from each of the 50 states, including over 150,000 individual votes across 2,000 different bills introduced in state legislatures.
The members of the Republican caucuses in each of the state legislatures voted with the conservative position an average of 76.71% of the time. The members of the Democratic caucuses in each of the state legislatures voted with the liberal position an average of 87.40% of the time. This means that, on average, Democrat legislators supported liberal legislation 10.69% more of the time than Republican legislators supported conservative legislation, indicating a relative lack of commitment on the latter’s part to the ideology of much of their base.
“Republicans run on conservative promises, but after they win more of them abandon the tough votes on key conservative policies when compared to Democrats whose first rule is to stick together,” said CPAC Chairman Matt Schlapp. “Our analysis shows how moderate Republicans broke apart on key issues like parental choice in education, securing strong voter ID, or putting a stop to COVID mandates.” CPAC Foundation also found a considerable mismatch between the conservatism of many states and their elected officials, presenting further evidence of this phenomenon. For example, five of the ten least conservative states held sessions in states that vote consistently conservatively. This comes in spite of the fact that the voting populations of these states broke widely for President Trump in the 2020 election and that the Republicans had sizeable majorities over the Democrats in their legislatures.
