Ideological Balance Among Local Government Boards

Political geography in America today is defined by a variegated patchwork of rural red and urban blue localities. Given this, one might expect most local governments to be dominated by one political ideology or the other. And yet, our recent line of research—supported by the philanthropic foundation Carnegie Corporation of New York (CCNY)—has illustrated how local governments are more cooperative and less divided than we might think. 

Therefore, we at CivicPulse were curious to understand how partisan sorting does or doesn’t manifest in the ideological composition of local government boards. Answering this question is not a simple task, as most candidates for local office do not officially run with an affiliation with either major party. Furthermore, this pattern might vary depending on the type of local government being examined (e.g., county, municipality, school board, etc.). 

To unpack this, we recently asked a nationally representative sample of local elected officials   across different government types not only their own ideology but their best guess about the ideologies of their fellow board members. The results indicate that there is far greater ideological balance on many local boards than one might think purely based on political geography today. 

A majority (58%) of local officials reported that their board is ideologically balanced, which we defined as those boards that respondents indicated are either “mixed, but with more liberal members,” “a balance of liberal and conservative members,” or “mixed, but with more conservative members.” Meanwhile 29% of local officials said their board leans mostly or entirely conservative, and 12% said mostly or entirely liberal.  

To better understand how ideological composition might vary by government type, we segmented responses by whether an official served on a school, municipal/township, or county board (Figure 2).  

Despite the partisan controversies that have arisen around school boards in the national media, school boards represent the most bipartisan type of government represented in our survey, with 63% of school board members reporting balanced boards. And although concerns over school boards often center on a perceived over-representation of liberal opinions, only 14% of boards are mostly or entirely liberal while 23% of boards are mostly or entirely conservative. 

Meanwhile, bipartisanship is widespread among municipalities and townships as well, with 58% reporting balanced boards, 30% conservative, and 12% liberal. Even in municipalities with 50,000 or more residents—which are typically more liberal—52% of boards have ideological balance. 

County boards were most likely to be conservative (59%), representing the only instance where balanced boards were not the most common composition. However, ideological balance is not uncommon even among counties, with over a third (36%) of local county officials reporting that their boards are ideologically balanced.  

Taken together, these findings comport with the growing body of research illustrating how local governments challenge the national narrative of partisan hyper-sorting and polarization. Notably, these results also point to the fact that our previous research—showing cooperation is widespread in local government—is not simply because local government boards are ideologically homogenous.  

Survey background 

This research brief uses data from a nationally representative survey of local elected officials in U.S. townships, municipalities, county, and school board governments serving communities of 1,000 or more. Elected policymakers include top elected officials (e.g., Mayor, County Executive) and governing board members (e.g., Council Member, County Legislator). The survey was fielded from February to March 2025 and resulted in 1,021 respondents answering the selected questions. 

Survey text 

How would you describe the ideological composition of your board?  

Response options: All liberal members; Mostly liberal members; Mixed, but with more liberal members; A balance of liberal and conservative members; Mixed, but with more conservative members; Mostly conservative members; All conservative members; Other (please specify): 

Press Contact     

Victoria Starbuck  

Research Director 

victoriastarbuck@civicpulse.org  

Additional Resources 

For access to the underlying data for this brief, email us at info@civicpulse.org.