Has Oklahoma always trended conservative? Polling expert looks at voting history

More than most, Pat McFerron knows what Oklahomans are thinking.

By the age of 12, growing up in Nowata in northeastern Oklahoma, McFerron was campaigning door-to-door for a local congressman. In his 20s, shortly after graduation from college, he was working for an Oklahoma City company to pass a major bond issue, calling potential voters to ask for their support.

Now, about three decades later, he's a principal in a consulting firm, CMA Strategies, that does regular polling for businesses and political candidates. He is an adviser to and business partner with Oklahoma's 4th District U.S. Rep. Tom Cole, recently named chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee. Ballotpedia, the nonpartisan online political encyclopedia, calls McFerron one of the nation's "top influencers."

Q: It often seems that no one makes a move these days without checking the polls, particularly the politicians. And many are conflicting and may not necessarily be accurate, right?

A: Right. We do polling all over the country, and what I generally say is you get what you pay for. So if it's free and you're reading about it or learning about it on TV, how much is it worth?

Q: But you do enough polling to get a sense over time of trends that are supported by later election outcomes. I've always been curious ... what caused Oklahoma to switch from being a Democratic state to a Republican one?

A: This happened across most of rural America and especially the rural South. The fundamental beliefs of Oklahomans have not changed. I have access to polling data going back to 1982. At that point 70% of Oklahomans identified as being conservative. It's about 68% today. I think what's happened, with the advent of cable news accelerated by social media channels, is that Oklahomans are now able to place themselves more in a national context than a local contest. So when they look at someone like an AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the outspoken liberal Democratic congresswoman from New York), they say, 'Oh, no. That's not who I am. I'm a conservative. I'm on the other side.' Their ideologies haven't changed.

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Q: The parties have changed, then. You often hear, "I didn't leave the party. The party left me."

A: Yeah. I think what we've had is a natural alignment of ideologies with parties. Oklahomans are more focused on the issues that are being talked about nationwide than they are local economic issues and that sort of thing. Someone told me that there was a county clerk race in the last primary and they were talking about immigration as an issue. But that's what motivates people and gets eyeballs not just on newspapers and websites and TV, but to direct mailers, as well.

Q: Have you seen a shift in political involvement, where the process has basically been taken over by people with extreme views on both ends of the spectrum? Is that contributing to the polarization we see all over the country?

A: Yes. I will tell you I think that as a voting society we have shifted away from consensus building to market share. That's the way I put it. You're criticized under the current system for trying to bring people together, and you're rewarded for being intense. The example I use is Marjorie Taylor Greene (the outspoken conservative Republican congresswoman from Georgia). She and AOC are the same person.

Q: Does it seem like the moderates have left the playing field and the battle is between the extremes on both sides?

A: I don't know that there are a great deal of moderates, but there are a lot of people who are disinterested. I think they have left because they're frustrated, and they don't see the impact in their daily lives. They don't think their vote matters because the reality is in Oklahoma, in the general election, it really doesn't. We were 50th in the nation last year because, again, those November elections just don't matter in the state.

Q: Is finding a moderate, or compromise approach to a complicated problem like immigration even possible?

A: On immigration I've done some polling. The one thing Oklahomans agree on is that neither party wants to solve the problem. 80% will say neither Republicans or Democrats want to solve the immigration issue because they want to use it as a political issue. I think that's somewhat accurate, wouldn't you say?

Q: So was it a misguided effort for (Republican Sen.) James Lankford to try to build a bipartisan consensus on immigration?

A: It depends on what your goal is. If your goal is to solve the immigration crisis, then, yes, it's the right thing to do. If your goal is to demonstrate your extremist bonafides, then no. But was it a statesman-like thing to do? Yes. I know from polling that with the general population he came off looking good. It did hurt him among Republican primary voters. But is it anything that makes him vulnerable? No.

Q: Do you see a growing dissatisfaction with the political parties?

A: I think the real dissatisfaction is among those that aren't even registered to vote. It's not like they're so turned off. They just don't want to engage. I think it's something we really have to solve. I don't know if there's any panacea. I'm going to be working on a project to create what I'm calling a unified primary in Oklahoma. This would be a primary in which members of both parties would be on the same ballot. And then the people would pick the top two to vote on in the general election. It could be two Republicans or two Democrats. And I think that would make our November elections matter again.

Q: This would take a state initiative vote to establish, to change the system?

A: Yeah, it would be a state question.

Q: Are you seeing more and more efforts to basically bypass state legislatures by going the initiative route? That's been happening in some states on the abortion issue.

A: Yeah, I think anytime you have one party control, the primaries control the legislature. So you have the ability for the legislature to be at odds with where the general public is. I think most people are pro-life. The question becomes where you define that. Most Oklahomans still believe that abortion should be very, very rare, only in the case of rape, incest, life of the mother. This is another area, like immigration, where you see a lot of political opportunism going on.

Q: What are the issues that your polling shows are of greatest concern to people in Oklahoma?

A: Education and the economy are the top two concerns. Now they might disagree on what to do on those issues, but those are the top two. The one that's probably growing is about public safety, and that has an element of immigration in it. Crime, fentanyl use in particular, that's something else that's growing. And what you see pop up a little more right now is concern about infrastructure — roads, bridges, potholes, water systems and everything else.

Q: Oklahomans, including Republican primary voters in 2016, weren't as enthusiastic about Donald Trump then as they seem to be today. Trump lost to Ted Cruz in that primary vote. Do you think Trump is popular in Oklahoma because of his conservative positions or his personality?

A: No, no. He has a populist streak that is very appealing to Oklahomans. It's really broadened some of the Republicans. He might be closer to Woody Guthrie on some things on the populist side. Anti-establishment. That's really what Oklahoma's roots are and where its strength is, absolutely. I believe he's tapped into that.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Has Oklahoma always trended conservative? Polling expert looks at voting history