Maps: Senate Conservative Performance Index visualized

Previously, I've posted the Conservative Performance Index in a spreadsheet form, with details on the scoring and ranking of each member of the Legislature. Since maps have kinda been my "thing" on this blog, I decided to put the CPI into visual format.

We looked at the State House in this post, and now we'll look at the State Senate. To view these in a larger size, click on the images. First up, for reference, the current partisan makeup of the Senate. This includes the winners of three recent special elections -- two Democrats (SD37 and SD44) and one Republican (SD45):

Democrats hold 8 Senate seats now; 4 in the OKC/Norman metro, 3 in the Tulsa metro, and one representing Lawton and some rural areas around Fort Sill. Other than the latter district, Senate Democrats have disappeared from rural Oklahoma, including their former stronghold/base of Little Dixie.

Now, the Conservative Performance Index visualized:

The darker the red, the higher the positive CPI score; the darker the blue, the lower the negative CPI score. Bear in mind, the Conservative Performance Index is based on two factors: the member's Conservative Rating (an average of two voting record rating systems) minus their Republican District Rating (voter registration, gubernatorial and presidential voting). This is to illustrate how conservative or liberal a legislator is for their specific district.

The above map has two districts that were not rated due to being vacant, and one district switched parties. Those are indicated by the red and blue stripes. The Tulsa district that flipped shows the final rating for Sen. Dan Newberry, whose resignation went into effect on January 31st, and thus he is rated for the 2017 regular session.

The latest Senate CPI scores can be found here.

Now, let's split the map up by party affiliation. First up, the 40 Senate Republicans:

Generally speaking, the Senate Republicans scored better than their House colleagues. Members from the southeast (Little Dixie) scored the best, with 5 of the top 7 CPI scores. Freshmen GOP members comprise a whopping 11 of the 15 negative (blue) scores, with the 9 worst scores all belonging to freshmen.


Finishing things off, here are the 6 Senate Democrats:

All of the Democrats have negative to very-negative CPI scores, unlike their House comrades who had several members with positive scores.


Once again, you can view the full Senate CPI scores here. You can view the House CPI scores here and the House CPI maps here.

Maps: House Conservative Performance Index visualized

Previously, I've posted the Conservative Performance Index in a spreadsheet form, with details on the scoring and ranking of each member of the Legislature. Since maps have kinda been my "thing" on this blog, I decided to put the CPI into visual format.

We'll take a look at the State House in this post. To view these in a larger size, click on the images. First up, for reference, the current partisan makeup of the House.

12 of the 28 Democrat House seats are in the OKC/Norman metro, with 5 in the Tulsa metro, and the remainder in outlying, mostly rural areas.

Now, the Conservative Performance Index visualized:

The darker the red, the higher the positive CPI score; the darker the blue, the lower the negative CPI score. Bear in mind, the Conservative Performance Index is based on two factors: the member's Conservative Rating (an average of three voting record rating systems) minus their Republican District Rating (voter registration, gubernatorial and presidential voting). This is to illustrate how conservative or liberal a legislator is for their specific district.

Therefore, some Democrats have higher CPI scores due to the liberalism of their district and their relative conservatism, while some Republicans have lower CPI scores due to the conservatism of their district and their relative liberalism.

The specific House CPI scores can be found here.

Now, let's split the map up by party affiliation. First up, the 73 House Republicans:

Ouch. Lots of blue for negative CPI scores. GOP members underperform pretty dramatically in the northwest and central parts of the state, with most of the very-positive CPI scorers being toward the southern or eastern fringes of GOP-held territory (with a few metro exceptions).


Finishing things off, here are the 28 House Democrats:

You will likely need to view the image larger in order to see the cluster of Democrat districts in the metros. Other than Donnie Condit in the McAlester area, the rural Democrats all have negative to very-negative CPI scores, while some of the metro members overperform for their district.


Once again, you can view the full House CPI scores here. I'll take up the Senate CPI maps soon.

Conservative Performance Index: OK Senate

UPDATE: view the Senate CPI maps here.

Following up on my Conservative Performance Index for the Oklahoma State House post this morning, this post compares each state senator's conservative score to their district rating, to add up their Conservative Performance Index.

The conservative rating ('CR' in the spreadsheet) I use is an average of the most recent American Conservative Union scores for Oklahoma legislators, and the Oklahoma Constitution's Conservative Index. Using multiple sources broadens the perspective and scoring system for what I feel is a more accurate picture.

Positive CPI scores indicate that the member's conservative voting outperforms their district's Republican rating (RDR). Negative scores show that the member is more liberal than the district.

One purpose of this system is to illustrate how conservative or liberal a legislator is for their district. As filing for office is coming up next month, this edition of the Conservative Performance Index will be the final version before elections are decided for the upcoming legislative term.

In this post, we'll look at the CPI for State Senate members (the State House CPI can be viewed here).


This year's Senate CPI is more of a mixed bag than the House CPI. The top five Senators (all Republican) stayed about the same or increased their conservative scores, while the freshmen GOP class sunk the overall Republican average by having (with few exceptions) negative to extremely-negative scores.

Top scoring senators this time are Joseph Silk (R-SD5) at +36.1, followed by Nathan Dahm (R-HD33) at +34.3, and Josh Brecheen (R-HD6) at +34.2. Rounding out the top five are Anthony Sykes (HD24) at +29.9, and Mark Allen (SD4) at +29.4. As you can note by comparing the rankings, the top 9 members are the same this time as they were last time, with most changes being one-rank leapfrogging.

Unlike in the State House, no Democrats have positive CPI scores. Anastasia Pittman (D-SD48) tops out the Democratic caucus at -3.2. J.J. Dossett (D-SD34) has the lowest Democrat score at -22.1. The average Democratic CPI is -14.5 (last time was -8.0).

On the Republican side, 25 members (62.5%)  have positive CPI scores, while 15 (37.5%) have negative scores. Of the 13 freshmen, only 2 (15%) had positive scores. That means 11 (85%) of freshmen Republicans had negative ratings.

The average Republican CPI is +3.9 (last time was +15.0). The freshman GOP average is -12.3, while the non-freshman average is +11.8. As with the House, the freshman GOP class is an appalling and unmitigated embarrassment.

The only non-freshmen Republicans with CPI scores below 0 are Ervin Yen (R-SD40) at -5.6, Stephanie Bice (R-SD22) at -5.1, now ex-Sen. Bryce Marlatt (R-SD27) at -5.0, and Ron Sharp (R-SD17) at -4.0. James Leewright (R-SD12; +3.3) and Julie Daniels (R-SD29; +1.8) are the only freshmen Republicans above 0.

The House Democrats outperformed their Senate counterparts, while the Senate GOP scored far better than the House GOP did (although both freshmen Senators and Representatives had a nearly identical average).

Conservative Performance Index: OK House

UPDATE: view the House CPI maps here.

Following up on my 2017 Republican District Ratings from a while back, this post compares each legislator's conservative score to their district rating, to add up their Conservative Performance Index.

The conservative rating ('CR' in the spreadsheet) I use is an average of the most recent American Conservative Union scores for Oklahoma legislators, the Oklahoma Constitution's Conservative Index, and for the House, the recent Platform Index for the two special sessions over the past few months. Using multiple sources broadens the perspective and scoring system for what I feel is a more accurate picture.

Positive CPI scores indicate that the member's conservative voting outperforms their district's Republican rating (RDR). Negative scores show that the member is more liberal than the district.

One purpose of this system is to illustrate how conservative or liberal a legislator is for their district. As filing for office is coming up next month, this edition of the Conservative Performance Index will be the final version before elections are decided for the upcoming legislative term.

In this post, we'll look at the CPI for State House members. We'll examine the State Senate in the next CPI post.


This year's CPI is somewhat lower than the 2016 CPI. Top scoring legislators this time are freshman Rick West (R-HD3) at +30.9, followed by George Faught (R-HD14) at +30.3, and Jason Murphey (R-HD31) at +30.1. Rounding out the top five are John Bennett (HD2) at +27.8, and Travis Dunlap at +25.2.

For comparison, the top seven in 2016 were all above these scores (Faught is the only common member; the rest dropped further down the list or termed out). Most districts got more Republican, while conservative averages sagged some overall; the combination reduced most CPI scores. For comparison, I've added a column to show where each member ranked in the 2016 CPI.

The top Democrats were Shane Stone (D-HD89) at +21.9, Regina Goodwin (D-HD73) at +20.9, Jason Lowe (D-HD97) at +20.3, George Young (D-HD99) at +10.8, and Eric Proctor (D-HD77) at +10.5. Four of these hold seats with very low Republican District Ratings (ranging from 10.3 to 31.7, averaging 20.4), with the exception of Proctor, whose district is a 43.5 (slightly more Republican than the most-Democratic GOP-held seats).

Cindy Munson is the lowest scoring Democrat, as well as the lowest scoring non-freshman member, at -29.4. The only member to score lower was Zack Taylor (R-HD28) at -32.4; Taylor won a special election and thus is only rated on his special session votes. 4 Democrats and 12 Republicans have CPI ratings of -20 or worse.

The lowest non-freshmen Republicans are Casey Murdock (R-HD61) at -25.0, Leslie Osborn (R-HD47) at -22.3, Mike Sanders (R-HD59) at -17.8, Chris Kannady (R-HD91) at -17.5, and John Pfeiffer (R-HD38) at -16.5.

An astounding 46 Republicans (63%) have negative CPI scores (24 of which of are freshmen), while only 27 (27%) have positive CPI scores. 21 Democrats are negative, and 7 have a positive CPI. Last year, six Republicans and one Democrat had a CPI of +30 or higher; this year, only three Republicans are at that level. 7 Republicans and three Democrats are between +20 and +30, compared to 18 Republicans last year.

Of the 27 freshmen Republicans, 24 have negative CPI scores, while 3 have positive CPI scores. That makes the freshmen GOP average -12.2. This freshman class is an abysmal failure for conservatism and the Republican Party.

The average Republican score is -2.7 (last year was  +14.8), and the average Democrat score is -5.5 (last year was -4.4). If freshmen Republicans were taken out of the equation, the GOP average would have been +2.9.

Next time, we'll examine the 2017 Conservative Performance Index for the State Senate.

Conservative Performance Index - OK Senate

Following up on my Republican District Rating system, this post compares each legislator's conservative score to their district rating, to add up their Conservative Performance Index.

The conservative rating ('CR' in the spreadsheet) I used is an average of the American Conservative Union scores for Oklahoma legislators and the Oklahoma Constitution's Conservative Index. Using two sources broadens the perspective and scoring system.

Positive CPI scores indicate that the member's conservative voting outperforms their district. Negative scores show that the member is more liberal than the district.

In my last post, we looked at the CPI for State House members. Now, let's look at the CPI for State Senate members.


SD5 Sen. Joseph Silk has far and away the best CPI score at +45.4. The next four are all Republicans - SD6's Josh Brecheen (+32.7), SD33's Nathan Dahm (+31.9), SD4's Mark Allen (+31.6), and SD14's Frank Simpson (+31.4).

12 Republicans have CPI scores of +20 or better. Only two Democrats have positive scores: Anastasia Pittman (SD48, +7.2) and J.J. Dossett (SD34, +0.7). The only Republicans with negative scores are Ron Sharp (SD17, -1.6) and Bryce Marlatt (SD27, -1.6).

The average Republican CPI score is +15.0, and the average Democrat CPI score is -8.0.

13 senators are leaving office due to term limits, not seeking reelection, or losing their primary election. The average CPI for those leaving office is +2.0 (+7.1 for Republicans and -14.8 for Democrats). For the members who are running for reelection or elected without opposition, the average CPI is +13.9 (+17.7 for Republicans and -4.6 for Democrats).

Conservative Performance Index - OK House

Following up on my Republican District Rating system, this post compares each legislator's conservative score to their district rating, to add up their Conservative Performance Index.

The conservative rating ('CR' in the spreadsheet) I used is an average of the American Conservative Union scores for Oklahoma legislators and the Oklahoma Constitution's Conservative Index. Using two sources broadens the perspective and scoring system.

Positive CPI scores indicate that the member's conservative voting outperforms their district. Negative scores show that the member is more liberal than the district.

In this post, we'll look at the CPI for State House members.



In what might surprise some, the top performer is Democrat State Rep. Regina Goodwin. She represents HD73, in the heart of north Tulsa. Her district has the lowest Republican rating in the state at 10.0%. Her conservative rating is 53, giving her a CPI of +43.0. She is the only Democrat in the top 34 House scores.

The second highest CPI score is Rep. George Faught of HD14 at +38.1. Term-limited Rep. Sally Kern (HD84) is third with +36.1, and term-limited Rep. Paul Wesselhoft (HD54) is fourth with +34.4. Freshman Rep. Scooter Park (HD65) is fifth with a CPI of +33.3. Incoming House Speaker Charles McCall is sixth at +33.1.

The lowest Republicans are Rep. Casey Murdock (HD61) with -15.6, term-limited Rep. Doug Cox (HD5) with -5.5, Rep. Leslie Osborn (HD47) with -3.8, term-limited Speaker Jeff Hickman (HD58) with -3.0, and term-limited Rep. Marian Cooksey (HD39) with -2.7.

Six Republican and one Democrat have CPI scores above +30. 18 Republicans have a score between +20 and +30. The average Republican score is +14.8, and the average Democrat score is -4.4.

61 Republicans have positive CPI scores, while 9 Republicans have negative CPI scores. 12 Democrats rate in positive territory, while 19 are negative (including six below -20).

33 House members are leaving office due to term limits, not seeking reelection, or losing their primary election. The average CPI for those leaving office is +6.2 (+14.0 for Republicans and -6.4 for Democrats). For the members who are running for reelection or elected without opposition, the average CPI is +9.8 (+15.1 for Republicans and -3.2 for Democrats).


In my next post, we'll look at the Conservative Performance Index for the State Senate.