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In our last article, we shared a county by county breakdown of average 2023-2024 Freedom Index scores published by the John Birch Society. We received feedback that the scores for South Carolina Republicans were unrealistically low and couldn’t possibly be right.

JBS, a conservative group formed in 1958, has applied the same standard to every state legislator in the nation in determining their measure called the Freedom Index, so we thought we’d find out how Republicans in South Carolina averaged compared to their Republican counterparts in other states. Below is a graph of the findings. Also, if you missed the original article, find it here.

South Carolina Republicans’ Freedom Index average is 40.2. If you remove the Freedom Caucus, which has an average of 83.4, the average drops to 32.9.

The rationale behind the Freedom Index score can be found here.

What About Other Conservative Scorecards?

There are many scorecards out there with varying standards. Here is another one we found online from The Club for Growth comparing South Carolina’s Freedom Caucus (which we believe has room for improvement in how they vote) with other representatives in South Carolina.

CPAC’s ratings indicate that a mere 38% of bills passed in SC support conservative outcomes. The CPAC website allows you to click on each state and see specific statistics on the heat map pictured below:

While we didn’t analyze Americans for Prosperity’s scorecard, a brief glance shows us this year SC legislators scored much higher on average than they did last year, leading us to believe the score was potentially heavily influenced by the passage of the Certificate of Need bill they lobbied hard to pass.

What other conservative scorecards are you seeing and how does our legislature stack up?