Why is the US so conservative?

[Torie]

Part of it - perhaps waning now - is that our ethnic diversity deflects to some extent what would otherwise be perhaps more class based voting. (I notice now that Lief mentioned this above.) And of course for a developed nation, the US is off the charts when it comes to to the percentage of its population for which matters of faith are an important aspect of their lives.  On the regression analysis line, most of the nations are dots that are not far from the line created by per capita income on one axis and religious intensity on the other, while the US is up in the corner of the chart just miles and miles away from the line.

Anyway, that is my theory. Some might think it has more to do with the indulgence of the fantasy of American exceptionalism, but I don't really subscribe to that one myself.