Created and maintained by professors of political science at Montana State University, this website seeks to bring political science analysis to current political events in Montana, the United States, and across the globe. Our aim is to provide nonpartisan analysis and commentary in a political world replete with punditry and partisanship.
This evening, Congressman Paul Ryan announced his willingness to serve as Speaker if House Republicans agree to unite behind him. As Congressman Ryan Zinke has already indicated he would support Ryan if he were to run for the Speakership, it would appear that Zinke's Speakership bid (such as it was) appears to be over. Unless, of course, the House Freedom Caucus still thinks Congressman Ryan is too liberal.
I wrote last week that Congressman Zinke appeared to be too liberal to obtain enough support from the House Republican Caucus. Using a common measure of ideology employed by political scientists, I demonstrated that the Congressman was to the left of both the House Freedom Caucus and the House Republican mean. In fact, among the many names bandied about for the Speakership, Congressman Zinke was the second most liberal.
The Congressman's spokesperson, Heather Swift, took to Twitter to dispute my claim. She pointed me to GovTrack's measure of ideology. Swift pointed out that it was important to not only consider votes taken on the House floor (which is the basis of the NOMINATE score), but legislation that is sponsored and co-sponsored but which has not (and very well will not) receive space on the House agenda, therefore, will not receive a formal roll call vote.
Swift is not entirely wrong on this point. In fact, as I argue in Battle for the Big Sky, bill sponsorship is a better measure of true preferences because of the substantial resources required to submit and advocate for a piece of legislation. I don't entirely buy the argument that co-sponsorships is a good indicator of real ideological preferences, however, because a co-sponsorship could represent a member's true, revealed preferences or it might simply represent "cheap" talk--an attempt to look more left or right than one actually is.
In any case, I was happy to investigate the data that Swift pointed me to in order to see if I had missed something or had misrepresented the Congressman ideologically. I went to GovTrack, read their account of their ideology measure based upon bill sponsorships and co-sponsorships, and downloaded it. The folks at GovTrack note that their measure of ideology, while based on different information than Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal's NOMINATE scores, correlated well with those scores. You can read about the methodology here and grab the scores yourself.
The first thing I did was merge the NOMINATE data with the GovTrack Ideology measure and ran a simple correlation in Stata. Sure enough, the measures correlated robustly at .90. In other words, the measure of ideology based on roll calls was very similar to the measure of ideology based upon co-sponsorship patterns. In the political science business, this is what we call a high degree of face validity.
Next I simply ran a quick scatterplot of the NOMINATE and ideology scores for each member of the 114th Congress. Again, visually the data show that the two appear to measure the same thing. The upper right corner represents the Republicans while the lower left represents the Democrats. Here's that plot with the X-axis the Poole-Rosenthal NOMINATE and the Y-axis the GovTrack Ideology measure.
The next two graphs separate out the seventeen Republican speaker candidates mentioned in the news. The first chart replicates the scatterplot above, while the second simply graphs the speaker candidates from left to right using the GovTrack ideology score alone. In both charts, I add the mean value of the House Republican caucus, the mean value of the House Freedom Caucus, and the value for one standard deviation above and below the mean.
What do I find?
Essentially the same story I found when looking at the NOMINATE data alone. Congressman Zinke is now the fourth most liberal among those mentioned as Speaker candidates when looking at the GovTrack ideology measure. NOMINATE had him at second most liberal. He's still to the left of the Republican House Caucus mean. And he's still considerably to the left of the House Freedom Caucus. Using these data, Paul Ryan, Ryan Zinke, and Darrell Issa are all essentially the same ideologically--and all are to the left of the House Republican Caucus.
The take away point? Congressman Zinke, whether using roll call votes or co-sponsorship patterns, is on the left ideologically among his House Republican colleagues. In fact, there are 62 other members who are closer--using the GovTrack ideology measure--to the House Republican mean.
And, again, if Congressman Ryan is too liberal to be Speaker according to the House Freedom Caucus, than isn't Congressman Zinke? #data
In 1960, Richard Neustadt penned the seminal study of the American Presidency: Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents.
The book really lay the cornerstone for the behavioral revolution in
presidential studies and political scientists still assign the book to
undergraduate students. In fact, I'm teaching it right now and
re-reading portions as I prepare for class discussion today.
And, as I do my prep, I wonder how useful the book is today in an era of polarized political parties.
Neustadt's
main argument is that, in a government with separate institutions
sharing powers, the chief power of the president is the power to
persuade. He claims that if the president has to resort to his formal
powers to achieve his objectives, he's already failed and is likely to
pay a high price that will further undermine his persuasive capital in
future endeavors. To be effective, a president must husband his prestige
among the Washington elite and convince other political players that
their interests are aligned with the presidents.
Fundamentally,
the political landscape has changed tremendously since Neustadt wrote
the book. As well-documented elsewhere, the 1960s was an unusual moment
in political time when the parties were relatively heterogeneous
ideologically and members of Congress represented diverse and
competitive congressional districts. Presidents could effectively
marshal public opinion with the bully pulpit because the pulpit that
mattered was the Washington press corps, and there were only a few
television networks to command the attention of the American people.
Oh, how the times have changed.
The
media elite no longer have the sway or swagger they once did.
Traditional media empires are struggling to stay alive. As fewer people
read them, newspapers are folding and consolidating. People are
increasingly aligning their political beliefs with the blogs they read
and the newspapers they subscribe to. And members of Congress are less
trapped in the bubble of the Washington establishment than ever. They
spend more than half the time at home in their congressional districts,
and very rarely mingle across party lines. Members of Congress depend
even less on the president to win elections and hold their seats. In
ideologically polarized districts, the elections that matter are
primaries and not the generals; giving into a president and compromising
draws grumbles from the party base and ever more successful primary
challengers who are ever more extreme. Just ask Dick Lugar and Bob
Bennett the price of appearing too willing to go along with the other
party. Here in Montana, Republican Steve Daines has received his fair
share of gripes from members of his own party when he voted to re-open
government. One candidate, Champ Edmunds, is reconsidering his decision
to switch to the House race and may opt to challenge Daines in the
primary once Daines makes his widely anticipated Senate campaign
official.
Neustadt wrote that "the essence of a
President's persuasive task, with congressmen and everybody else, is to
induce them to believe that what he wants of them is what their own
appraisal of their own responsibilities requires them to do in their
interest, not his" (p. 40). That might have been possible in 1960. But
in 2013? A nigh impossible task. Consider the healthcare debate and
debacle. Not a single Republican member of Congress voted for the
Affordable Care Act. In fact, Republicans want to actively repeal the
law and, as I read this morning in the National Journal,
Republican legislators have placed numerous obstacles in states with
the express objective to make the law unworkable. How can the president
exercise persuasion when the objectives of the two parties is at
cross-purposes?
And the President is not blameless.
Although a grand show was made to appear inclusive during the
development of ACA, the president knew--ultimately--that he had enough
votes in both chambers to push through legislation without Republican
involvement and input. In fact, the final piece of ACA was implemented
using fast track reconciliation procedures--to the dismay of many
Republican legislators.
How can the president--or
anyone--be persuasive in an environment when the bargaining tool kit has
been left bare? The president has no electoral mandate--he won
reelection in a tight contest. The president has no congressional
coattails. The president can't campaign in congressional districts where
a Republican member of Congress is cross-pressured--hardly any exist.
The president can't even campaign in districts where Democrats are
moderate or conservative because that might endanger their reelection.
The president can't lubricate the legislative process with
earmarks--those have become toxic in this political environment and have
been eliminated in the House. The president can't marshal the public's
attention in a fragmented, narrowcasted media environment. Worse,
neither side can attend even to the simplest functions of government without using the opportunity
to gain political leverage. The debt crisis and government shutdown are a
case in point. No bargaining occurred and that was never the point. It
was about bludgeoning each side into submission while satisfying the
base of each party to raise campaign cash. No wonder no one escaped
unscathed from the sorry escapade.
Neustadt is
right on one point. When the president fails to persuade and relies on
his formal powers, he admits failure and pays a hefty political price.
The problem is the failure to persuade is not the president's failure
alone today. It is a failure of the political system which has, for all
intents and purposes, made it impossible for institutions sharing power
to bargain. Instead, we have institutions hording power. The result is
dysfunction and an increasingly frustrated American public. Will that
frustration lead to some grand swell up from the masses for political
change? We can only hope, but that hope belies political realities.
Watching this Montana Senate race closely has proved to be immensely interesting, enjoyable, and fascinating. Readers of this blog will note that I have repeatedly stressed the notion of “one of us”—campaigns work hard to show how their candidate is connected to voters and how their opponent is not. This really gets at the heart of representative democracy: voters are more likely to trust decisions made by representatives who look, act, and think like them. To use the language of postmodernism, what voters do not want and fear is the “other”: the representative who is beholden to someone else and who will make decisions not in their best interest.
Part of proving or demonstrating “one of us” is to discuss legislative records: What have you done for me lately and how is it evidence that you are serving the best interests of the state? Senator Tester casts himself as an independent voice for an independent-minded state, while calling Congressman Rehberg a yes man for Republican Party bosses. Congressman Rehberg, alternatively, says he’s the true voice of the Montana voter and Senator Tester is merely another vote for President Obama and his agenda. Each side will use a vote or a series of votes to support their position: Senator Tester voted with President Obama X number of times, and Congressman Rehberg is too conservative for Montana because he voted for House Republican proposal X, Y, or Z.
How can the average voter make any sense of these claims? As with all things, it depends on how you look at the records of both candidates. I am going to present three ways of thinking about Senator Tester’s and Congressman Rehberg’s records. I am going to present some additional data that will help you contextualize those records. Using this information, I provide some brief commentary but will largely leave it to Montanans to draw their own conclusions about the claims of both campaigns about their own records and the records of their opponents.
In general, the claims made by the campaigns about themselves and their opponent revolve around three distinct concepts:
Party Unity: How often does the member vote with their party in Congress?
Ideology: How liberal or conservative is the member?
Presidential Support: How often does the member support the president’s legislative agenda?
There are a number of ways these concepts can be empirically measured. Here are some standard measures utilized by political scientists that we’ll examine:
Party Unity: There are many ways to measure party unity, but the most common measure is produced annually by Congressional Quarterly since the late 1950s. CQ defines a party unity vote as a majority of one party opposing the majority of the other party on a given vote. To be specific, if 51% of Republicans vote yea on a motion and 51% of Democrats vote Nay, that vote meets the minimum standard to be included as a party unity vote. A party unity score is the percentage of times a member votes with their party on all party unity votes cast in a given year. The percentage of party unity votes as a percentage of all votes cast in Congress has ebbed and flowed throughout the years—the mid-1970s were a low point, while the last twenty years has seen a rebound in the number of votes clearly dividing the parties. Party unity scores have also increased over the late 20th and early 21st centuries, meaning members of the House and the Senate have become more loyal to their parties and less likely to break partisan ranks. Averages today are typically in the high 80s to low 90s in both chambers, with the House usually exhibiting more party loyalty than the Senate.
Ideology: One way to measure how liberal or conservative a member is to use DW-NOMINATE scores. DW-NOMINATE is a measure of ideology created by Poole and Rosenthal in their seminal work, Congress: A Political-Economic History of Roll Call Voting. Essentially, DW-NOMINATE takes the all the votes cast in Congress over time and develops factors which explain the variation found in those votes. The first dimension score Poole and Rosenthal call ideology, and this measure places members of Congress on a left-right dimension. Positive scores approaching 1 are more conservative, while negative scores approaching -1 are more liberal. It is important to note that both parties have become increasingly polarized after 1975, which means the average Democrat has become more liberal and the average Republican more conservative in both the Senate and the House. The other important thing to note is that both parties have become more ideologically homogenous—meaning moderates have become increasingly rare. More information on NOMINATE and NOMINATE scores can be found at Keith Poole’s website here.
Presidential Support: Again, Congressional Quarterly has set the standard for developing a measure of Presidential Support. CQ determines whether the presidential administration has taken a clear and public position on legislation. If the administration has, the vote on taken on that legislation is included in the universe of votes utilized to calculate an individual legislator’s presidential support. Simply put, a presidential support score is the percentage of times a member of the House or the Senate has voted to support legislation on which the administration has taken a public position. Higher scores indicate more support for the administration, lower scores less support. Traditionally, administrations receive the bulk of their support from their parties in Congress—with support of the administration’s positions from the opposition party declining in recent decades. Congressional Democrats often support Democratic administrations, and Congressional Republicans support Republican administrations.
Below, I have created a series of graphs depicting the voting records of the Montana congressional delegation between 2001 and 2011. In each instance, I plot the party unity, ideology, and presidential support scores for Senators Tester, Baucus, Burns, and Congressman Rehberg. I also provide contextual information, namely the average scores for Democrats and Republicans in both chambers. Finally, I wrap up the discussion with some concluding thoughts and by examining key congressional votes to see if that information tells a story that is any different from these more general measures of party unity, ideology, and presidential support.
Party Unity
The first chart plots the party unity scores of Montana’s Senate delegation and compares it to the party means in the chamber. Again, a party unity score is the percentage of time the member votes with their party when the majority of each party is in opposition. The second chart plots Congressman Rehberg’s party unity score relative to his party’s average scores.
Figure 1: Party Unity in Montana's Senate Delegation, 107th-111th Congresses
Figure 2: Congressman Rehberg's Party Unity, 107th-111th Congresses
NOMINATE
How liberal or conservative is Montana’s Congressional Delegation? NOMINATE scores help sort this out. The first chart plots the first dimension DW-NOMINATE values of Montana’s Senate delegation, the second plots Congressman Rehberg relative to his peers in the House.
Figure 3: Montana's Senate Delegation and Ideology, 107th-111th Congresses
How often did Presidents Bush and Obama receive support from Montana’s Congressional delegation? The final two charts show us. Again, the first chart is the CQ Presidential Support score plotted for Senators Burns, Baucus, and Tester and the second chart is Congressman Rehberg relative to his Republican peers.
Figure 5: Montana's Senate Delegation and Presidential Support, 107th-111th Congresses
In general, we learn the following from these measures of party unity, ideology, and presidential support:
1.Members of Congress generally support their parties on party unity votes.
2.Members of Congress generally support the administration when the administration shares their party affiliation.
3.Ideologically, Montana’s Democratic Senate delegation votes to the right of the average Senate Democrat. It is difficult to call either Senator Baucus or Tester a liberal—they are moderate or—perhaps more generously—conservative Democrats. Congressman Rehberg faithfully exists at about his party’s mean in the House—and quite possibly a tad to the left of the mean GOP member in the last Congress. Congressman Rehberg is conservative, but his conservatism is not extreme relative to his peers. He’s no Ron Paul or Randy Neugebauer, both representing Texas and two of the most conservative members of the Republican delegation in the House.
Three different ways to consider the legislative records of Montana’s congressional delegation. Overall, the picture is far more complex and nuanced than we might expect given the campaign rhetoric we hear on Montana’s airwaves, read in our inboxes, and a view on Facebook.
