Political attitudes of voters in eastern Oklahoma

Abstract

Savage, Min and Aman (2011) examined the political attitudes of Democratic voters in eastern Oklahoma and argued that eastern Oklahoma has not realigned with the Republican Party largely because of a strain of populism among the population there. The results of the analysis supported their arguments. As they acknowledged, however, their data had room to improve. In this paper, we examine whether their arguments are still supported with a better survey data and more rigorous empirical tests. Our analysis supports the argument that a strain of populism, economic progressivism and religious conservatism, primarily accounts for the dominance of the Democratic Party in eastern Oklahoma.