San Francisco holds the title of most liberal city in the nation, according to a recent list released by Forbes. The American business magazine recently ranked the most conservative and progressive cities in the U.S. ahead of the 2016 primaries, and some of the results may surprise you.
“As several articles have pointed out… the most conservative cities are skewed toward being more liberal than one might expect,” Forbes says. “The how-much-wood-could-a-woodchuck-chuck way to say this is: the most conservative cities are not as conservative as the most liberal cities are liberal.”
Mesa, Arizona was crowned the most conservative city in America. It was followed by Oklahoma City, Virginia Beach, and Colorado Springs where pot-smoking is legal across the board. Anaheim, California also made the conservative list at #7.
New York—long considered a bastion of progressive policy—barely made the list, coming in at #9 for most liberal cities. It was beat out by Detroit, Minneapolis, Boston, Oakland, and Seattle. The runner-up to San Francisco was Washington, D.C.
Forbes’ rankings were based on cities with populations of over 250,000 which explains why a city like Berkeley remains absent from the running. The researchers relied on an article from The Economist which pulled data from an MIT study showing how city governments reflect their constituents’ political beliefs.
Read more about the most conservative and liberal cities in the nation and see the full rankings here.
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