Politically speaking, people in San Diego County cities are among the state's more conservative, but not the most conservative, according to a ranking of 150 cities based on voter registration.
Most to least conservative cities in San Diego County
• Poway
• Santee
• Carlsbad
• Escondido
• San Marcos
• Vista
• Oceanside
• El Cajon
• Encinitas
• La Mesa
• San Diego
• Chula Vista
Source: Sacramento Bee
The Sacramento Bee, in a survey published Monday, found that Chula Vista was the county's most liberal city, with 48,000 voters registered as Democrats or as members of left-leaning third parties and 34,000 registered as Republicans or members of right-leaning third parties.
Statewide, however, 62 other cities were listed as more liberal than Chula Vista based on ratio of liberals to conservatives.
San Diego was near the middle statewide, ranking as the 65th most liberal city. Information from the Secretary of State's office showed more than 267,000 liberal voters and more than 199,000 conservative voters.
La Mesa, with about 24,000 registered voters, ranked 84th on the scale running from liberal to conservative.
Poway, ranked as the sixth most conservative big city in California, was found to be San Diego County's most conservative city. More than 14,000 people were registered as Republicans or with other right-leaning parties, and Democrats or left-leaning third party members numbered about 5,000.
Voters in Carlsbad, Escondido and Santee fell into the conservative camp.
In San Marcos, with about 29,000 registered voters, about 5,600 more people registered as conservatives. In Vista, which has about 27,000 voters, the margin for conservatives was about 4,500.
Oceanside, with about 61,000 registered voters, conservatives outnumbered liberals by about 8,000, according to the newspaper survey.
El Cajon had nearly 16,500 conservative voters to about 13,600 liberal voters.
Encinitas was most evenly split local city, with 212 more conservative voters than liberals out of 28,000 registered voters.
In Berkeley, the most liberal city statewide, liberals outnumber conservatives by a 10-to-1 ratio.
Newport Beach, where conservatives outnumber liberals 3-to-1, was found to be the most conservative city statewide.
Registration was nearly even in the Los Angeles County city of Torrance and the San Bernardino County city of Chino.
The survey was inspired by a story on big city voter registration in The Economist magazine. Those rankings, published Aug. 1, found San Diego to be the 27th most liberal city in the country with a population of more than 250,000.
