The Westward Shift of Congressional Political Power

I'm putting together some information for a brief introductory chapter to my book on the Tester-Rehberg race to make the case for why those outside Montana should read a book about the 2012 campaign here. One reason among several for why I think this race is important concerns the dramatic shift in regional power that has occurred in the House of Representatives over the past century. The Montana race matters because Montana is in the West and the West has become a political powerhouse in Congress. As the West rises, not only do uniquely Western issues (such as water and public land policy) suddenly take on new significance, the West plays a more substantial role in shaping the policy debate on larger national questions.

To illustrate the power shift, I cobbled together data on the House seats apportioned to each region by decade. I define each region as follows:

East: The six New England states and the Mid-Atlantic states including Delaware and Maryland.

The Midwest/Plains: Includes Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and North and South Dakota.

The South: The eleven states of the old Confederacy.

The West: Everything else, including Alaska and Hawaii.

This first graph illustrates the percentage of House seats apportioned to each region by decade. I include estimates for the 2020 congressional apportionment from a piece written by Sean Trende at RealClear Politics in late 2012. You can read that article here.



The second graph is a simple pie chart illustrating the seat percentages by region during the 1900s.



And, for comparison, that same pie chart but using the 2020 reapportionment projections.



This illustrates the dramatic effects population shifts westward and southward have had politically. The Midwest utterly dominated the House at the turn of the century with 40 percent of the seats. By 2020, the West--which accounted for only 5 percent of House seats in the 1900s--will surpass the Midwest as the most powerful political region in the chamber with 105 seats. The Midwest will only have 103 seats. And although the South became the region with the most seats by the 1990s and will continue to add seats through 2020, the South has always been a politically powerful region in the House. In the 1900s, the South held a quarter of seats in the House of Representatives. In 2020, it will hold 33 percent--an increase of eight percentage points. The West, if projections hold, will have increased its share of seats by nineteen percentage points over the same period.

Short answer to why the 2012 Senate race matters is simple. Because the West matters. So goes the West, so goes the nation?

Why the Democrats are in Trouble in 2014

I've been invited to do some writing for Symposium Magazine, which has as its mission the connection of academics to the public sphere. This is something I have long advocated--and really is at the heart of my work as a teacher-scholar. I'm excited about this opportunity.

Here's a link to the latest issue with my article on the 2014 midterms. For those of you wanting to know why I'm not terribly bullish on Democrats in the Montana, this piece about the broader environment serves as an explanation at the macro-level.

Check out the article, check out the magazine. They are doing some compelling and thought-provoking stuff.

Montana Congressional Delegation Ideology Redux

In reference to my previous post, a reader asked me where former Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield fit ideologically in Montana's congressional delegation. Well, since I am a data nerd, I went and collected and graphed the Common Space scores for the entire Montana delegation from the 80th through the 112th Congresses. I didn't go back further than that because there's an argument to do so would distort the data. Poole and Rosenthal caution about making comparisons in ideological scores across party eras, and if we still believe in realignment theory as a useful frame to think about American politics (and there is great debate about this, see David Mayhew's book The End of Realignment), then it makes sense to restrict this analysis to the post-World War II era. In any case, the previous point still holds: Rehberg is not quite as conservative as folks might have us believe (he is in the middle of the Republican pack). Jon Tester and Max Baucus are moderate, ideological centrists--especially when compared to their co-partisans historically. You can grab these data yourself at Keith Poole's website here.

One last note. The numbers are slightly different from the previous version because new common space scores have been calculated using new information from the 112th Congress. In the aggregate, the patterns remain the same. If anything, the new numbers show Rehberg slightly more to the left and Tester closer to the right and Baucus. Interestingly, Baucus hasn't moved a whit (perhaps because of his long tenure and the massive numbers of votes he's taken--additional information shouldn't add much explanatory power to his ideological position).

And thanks to the reader who asked the question. This was a fun diversion!

P.S. Right click on the image to enlarge it.

The Ideology of Montana's Congressional Delegation in Historical Perspective

I'm working on a bunch of items for a chapter on the representational styles of Congressman Rehberg and Senator Tester. Here's a quick look at how they measure up ideologically compared to other senators and congressmen who have represented the state going back to the 1970s. The measure of ideology here is the Common Space score for the member, which is a measure of ideology calculated from congressional roll call data by Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal. You can get details on the measurement at Professor Poole's website, VoteView. Common Space scores allow ideological comparisons across congressional chambers, which is why I use them and not the more common DW-NOMINATE scores. Negative scores are liberal, positive scores are conservative.

Interestingly, Rehberg is the most liberal of the Republicans who represented the state. And Jon Tester is fairly centrist. He's to the left of Senator Baucus, but nowhere near as liberal as Congressman Pat Williams or Senator John Melcher. 

Just some food for thought on a Tuesday evening.