(DCWatchdog.com) – California has emerged among the least conservative states in the nation, joining the likes of Massachusetts and Hawaii, as per the latest update to the “State Conservative Rankings” compiled by two nonprofits.
Thus, the top five most liberal states in America, according to the ranking, are Massachusetts, Hawaii, Rhode Island, California, and Vermont.
The Center for Legislative Accountability (CLS) ranking, a project of the CPAC Foundation and the American Conservative Union Foundation, grades state legislatures and all 7,400 lawmakers in the United States. It assigns each legislator and legislator an individual conservative rating.
Thus, Massachusetts is presently the least conservative, with a rating of 15%, followed by Hawaii with 19%, Rhode Island with 20%, California with 24%, and Vermont with 26%.
Before the new update announced by the CLS (which is yet to be reflected in the ranking table), California’s legislature was the seventh most liberal in the US (and the 44th least conservative).
However, the new annual California Lawmaker Scorecard has seen it overtake Maryland, New Jersey, and Vermont, down from its previous conservative rating of 31%.
“This past election is likely to only worsen the plunge due to the projected flip of Republican seats to Democrat in the state Assembly,” CLS wrote.
Its scorecard also established California’s top-rated conservative lawmakers: Assemblyman Kevin Kiley, R-Granite Bay; Sen. Melissa Melendez, R-Lake Elsinore; and Assemblyman Frank Bigelow, R-O’Neals.
“The Lawmaker Scorecard conservative rating is calculated on individual lawmaker voting across 186 policy areas ranging from cultural and life issues to tax, fiscal, and regulatory policies,” the CLA said.
It explained that yearly it tallies more than 320,000 votes to produce the individual lawmakers’ scores as well as the 50 state rankings.
“Only 17 California Republican lawmakers earned awards from CPAC for earning conservative ratings of 80% and above,” the conservative scorecard said.
“However, an astounding 72 lawmakers earned CPAC’s ‘Coalition of the Radical Left’ award for conservative ratings of 10% or below,” it added.
CLS said the lawmaker scorecard was based on areas such as “Advancing Critical Race Theory Curriculum Mandates, Climate Crisis Acts; and Permanent Vote-By-Mail Schemes.”
The CLS report shows the top five most conservative states in the nation are Tennessee (with a conservative legislature rating of 74%), Florida (67%), Indiana (66%), Ohio (65%), and North Carolina 65%). Texas is ranked 14th, with a rating of 62%.
Thirty of the fifty states have a conservative ranking of their legislatures exceeding 50%.
California state lawmakers ranked 4th most liberal in the United States. https://t.co/8eWTDrXc1q
California trails Rhode Island (20%), Hawaii (19%), and Massachusetts (15%) as most liberal. pic.twitter.com/BJ2J4vY97c
— NEWSMAX (@NEWSMAX) November 29, 2022
