Sumiton is Alabama’s most conservative city, and one of the most conservative cities in the entire United States, according to a new analysis by a political tech startup called Crowdpac.
“We looked at all political donations to candidates on the federal and state level since 2002, and calculated a political ideology score for every town in America with a population greater than 6,000,” the company explained.
Crowdpac’s liberal-conservative rankings were done on a spectrum ranging from 10L (most liberal) to 10C (most conservative) with 0 right in the middle.
Amber Phillips, who wrote about the Crowdpac analysis for the Washington Post, says you probably won’t be too surprised by what it shows.
“People in cities tend to be more liberal than people in rural areas,” she said, “and the United States is increasingly divided into two — the liberal coast and the more conservative South and Midwest/Mountain West.”
Well-known leftwing hotbed Berkley, California, made the list of top 10 most liberal cities in the United States, but the conservative side is a group of smaller towns that are not well-known to people outside of their local area.
That includes Sumiton, which came in at No. 7 on the national list.
Sumiton is a town of under 3,000 people in Jefferson and Walker counties. The demographic makeup of the town is 93 percent white and just under 4 percent black. Only about 13 percent of the town’s roughly 1,000 households are single-parent and the average household income for the city is about $43,000. What makes the town standout, though, is that its residents donate almost exclusively to conservative political candidates, propelling Sumiton to a 7.7C score in the Crowdpac study.
Here’s a map of the Top 10 Most Conservative and Top 10 Most Liberal Cities nationwide.
(More after the map)
Here are the national rankings for Alabama’s 20 largest cities:
City – Crowdpac score | rank nationally (out of 4,994)
Birmingham – 2.8C | 1,478th
Montgomery – 3.0C | 1,414th
Mobile – 4.3C | 722nd
Huntsville – 3.3C | 1,242nd
Tuscaloosa – 3.3C | 1,227th
Hoover – 3.7C | 1,058th
Dothan – 5.6C | 255th
Decatur – 5.2C | 359th
Auburn – 3.3C | 1,229th
Madison – 3.9C | 914th
Florence – 2.9C | 1,459th
Gadsden – 3.8C | 962nd
Vestavia Hills – 2.6C | 1,590th
Prattville – 4.5C | 653rd
Phenix City – 3.4C | 1,179th
Alabaster – 4.1C | 808th
Bessemer – 1.4C | 2,206th
Enterprise – 5.3C | 341st
Opelika – 5.0C | 454th
Homewood – 2.0C | 1,891st
To lookup your hometown, click here.
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