A new study puts the Big Apple near the bottom of a list of the top 25 most liberal cities in America – and behind such newly crowned leftist redoubts as Gary, Ind., Newark, N.J., and Flint, Mich.

According to the study, released yesterday, Detroit, is the most liberal city in America. Provo, Utah, is the most conservative. The survey was conducted by the Bay Area Center for Voting Research, a nonpartisan, nonprofit institute based in Berkeley, Calif.

The institute’s findings, particularly on the liberal list, challenged the preconceptions of those who expected either small, left-leaning university towns – such as Madison, Wis., Berkeley, Calif., and Ann Arbor, Mich. – or major metropolises, such as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, to dominate the rankings. While Berkeley and Cambridge, Mass., came in at nos. 3 and 8 on the most liberal list, Madison and Ann Arbor were notably absent. Also missing from the top 25 list was Los Angeles, and other large cities ranked low, with Chicago coming in at no. 17 and New York appearing at no. 21.

Some New Yorkers said they were surprised that their city ranked only as the country’s 21st most liberal.

“What, did they count the Upper West Side separately?” a spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg, Edward Skyler, said.

A veteran national pollster based in upstate New York, John Zogby, said yesterday that he had guessed New York would be one of the top three most liberal cities, along with San Francisco and Madison.

In analyzing why New York lagged behind several other hotbeds of liberalism, Mr. Zogby surmised, “New York has Staten Island, and half of Queens, and cab drivers.”

The chairman of New York’s not-so-liberal Liberal Party, Henry Stern, too, said New York’s diversity and size might have contributed to its surprisingly illiberal ranking. “Well, New York is so big,” Mr. Stern said. “Because there are an awful lot of normal people in New York, they dilute the liberal strain.”

“There are probably more radicals in New York than in any other city,” he added. “But they’re spread among a population of 8 million.”

Mr. Stern, whose party, he said, carries the banner of a classical, Adam Smith-style liberalism, said he was disappointed that what was labeled liberalism was primarily a reflection of demographics and an adherence to welfare-state politics.

“Liberalism is not socialism or statism,” Mr. Stern said. “It’s not welfarism.”

Another New York City liberal and the publisher of the left-leaning Nation magazine, Victor Navasky, also took issue with the study’s findings and methodology. “I’m sure voting is only one measure” of a city’s liberalism, Mr. Navasky said. “Not voting is another measure, and the not-voters may be more liberal than the voters.”

“The number of organic microbeers,” he added, “is another measure.”

Ales notwithstanding, other cultural indicators – particularly a city’s views on hot-button social issues -provided better clues about urban politics, Mr. Zogby said, citing gay marriage, abortion, and gun control. Republican votes in New York, for example – known nationwide for its social liberalism – could reflect a more left-leaning political outlook than Democratic votes in Pennsylvania, Mr. Zogby said.

These criticisms provided small consolation to New Yorkers still disappointed that their city was insufficiently liberal yesterday, as they pledged to push New York further to the left.

“Maybe if we didn’t have a mayor that gave his money and support to George Bush, our city would be further up in the rankings,” Christy Setzer, a spokeswoman for the Democratic mayoral front-runner, Fernando Ferrer, said yesterday. “But come November, look out Motor City! We’re moving on up.”

The executive director of the Working Families Party, Daniel Cantor, said: “Although we take comfort in the city staying in the top 25 after twelve years of Republican rule, we know we’ll have to try harder to crack the top ten.”

Expressing frustration of a different sort was the chairman of the New York State Conservative Party, Michael Long. Mr. Long, a New York City resident, said he was unsurprised by the report’s ranking of New York as one of the most liberal cities, and also that not one location in New York state was among the nation’s most conservative.

“We were ahead of the poll,” Mr. Long said of the Conservative Party. “We’ve known it for a long time.”

“I live in New York City,” Mr. Long said. “And if we’re number 21, imagine how horrible it must be living in those other cities.”

“If we work hard enough, we can get New York City off that top 25 list,” he said. “All you have to do is cut some taxes and get rid of a few government programs.”

The Bay Area Center for Voting Research, established in 2004, says its purpose is analyzing voting trends in the San Francisco Bay Area. The new report, titled “The Most Conservative and Liberal Cities in the United States,” is the center’s first nationwide undertaking.

A spokeswoman for the institute, Lindsay Hogan, said yesterday that the study used votes cast in the 2004 presidential election to determine the relative political leanings of American urban centers with populations in excess of 100,000. Labeling Democratic votes “liberal” and Republican votes “conservative,” institute researchers also included third-party votes in their tabulations, classifying the parties as liberal or conservative based on their self-descriptions and policy platforms.

Ms.Hogan said that researchers then calculated the percentages of liberal or conservative votes cast and ranked the 237 cities accordingly.

Ms. Hogan said the researchers concluded that a city’s political leanings were determined largely by its racial composition. Heavily African-American cities such as Detroit; Washington, D.C.; Oakland, Calif.; and Newark, N.J., topped the liberal list. Cities that rated among the most conservative, the report found, were inhabited predominantly by whites.

In addition to Provo, the list of the most conservative cities was composed of urban centers mostly in Texas, Arizona, Florida, and – perhaps surprisingly – Southern California. While the Golden State enjoys a reputation for being possibly the nation’s most left-leaning, the study found that seven of America’s 25 most conservative cities were in the southern part of the state, concentrated in Orange County and inland farming areas. Highlighting the state’s north-south cultural divide, Northern California registered predominantly liberal, with Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco appearing among the top ten most left-leaning cities in the country.

The mayor of Provo, Lewis Billings, said yesterday that he was unfazed by the distinction of leading the country’s most conservative urban center. The residents of Provo, Mr. Billings said, are characterized by their commitment to family and church, and by their adherence to generally conservative principles. Around 75% of the city’s residents, Mr. Billings said, are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, adding that President Bush’s positions resonated strongly with Provoans’ values.

“I don’t think people in our community will be all that surprised,” Mr. Billings said. “We are what we are.”