Mark Olalde, The Republic | azcentral.com

Mesa is the most conservative big city in the country, according to research examining municipal politics nationwide.

And, little surprise, San Francisco is the most liberal.

The paper, "Representation in Municipal Government," analyzed public policy in cities across the country in search of trends in local ideology.

Chris Tausanovitch and Christopher Warshaw, political science professors at UCLA and MIT, respectively, authored the study. In researching the paper, the pair examined the average policy preferences of residents in the 51 U.S. cities with populations exceeding 250,000. They then compared them to the policies of those cities to see if political leanings were reflected in tax burdens and other city operations.

"The policies enacted by cities across a range of policy areas correspond with the liberal-conservative positions of their citizens on national policy issues," the professors wrote.

Most right leaning: Mesa, Oklahoma City, Virginia Beach

Only 11 cities were found to be conservative-leaning, two were neutral, and the rest were liberal. Mesa, a Phoenix-area suburb with a population of about 468,000, easily grabbed the top spot for most conservative city in the country. Oklahoma City and Virginia Beach, Va., followed as the next most right-leaning.

San Francisco held the distinction as the nation's most liberal city, followed by Washington, D.C., Seattle, and Oakland.

Two other Arizona cities, Phoenix and Tucson were on the list. While both showed up as liberal leaning, Phoenix was barely left of center and Tucson was several spots further left.

The study also took into account outside variables such as term limits and the mayorship, but found that those institutions did little to sway the majority public opinion in local settings. "These results demonstrate a robust role for citizen policy preferences in determining municipal policy outcomes," the study said.

[This story first published August 5, 2014.]