My colleague Boris Shor has performed some analysis (jointly with Nolan McCarty) on the ideological positions of state legislators. The estimates are based on state legislative voting, which might make you wonder how you could possibly compare legislators in one state with those in another. The trick is that some state representatives (for example, Barack Obama) also end up in Congress. There are enough of these overlap cases that you can put legislators from all 50 states on a common scale.
Boris and Nolan most recently applied their method to compare Deirdre Scozzofava, a state assemblywoman running on the Republican ticket in special election in New York’s 23rd congressoinal district. Boris writes:
Scozzafava has been assailed from the right for being far too liberal. For example, the libertarian Wall Street Journal this morning wrote, “Democrats want to portray this race as a familiar moderate-conservative GOP split, but the real issue is why Ms. Scozzafava is a Republican at all. She has voted for so many tax increases that the Democrat is attacking her as a tax raiser. She supported the Obama stimulus, and she favors “card check” to make union organizing easier, or at least she did until a recent flip-flop. . .” The conservative National Review writes: “In spite of its having gone for Obama in 2008, the district’s history suggests that it is basically conservative; Ms. Scozzafava is basically not. Boy, is she not. . . .
Actually, though, Boris and Nolan find Scozzafava to be pretty much in the exact center on a national scale:
Her ideological “common space” score is 0.02. These scores, similar but far superior to interest group ratings, put state legislators around the country on the same scale with each other, as well as with members of Congress.
Being in the center nationally puts Scozzafava to the right in New York:
Scozzafava’s score puts her in the 58th percentile of her party, which makes her slightly more conservative than the average Republican legislator in Albany, so she’s a conservative in her [state] party.
Here’s Boris’s graph showing the estimated positions of Democratic and Republican legislators in all 50 states in the past decade:
The Republican Party appears to be particularly liberal in Massacusetts, Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Oregon, Illinois, and Delaware (although not, as has been much remarked, in California). (The gray lines on the graph show the average ideologies ofcongressional Democrats and Republicans in approximately the same time period.)
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Though if I’m not mistaken, that score would put her pretty far on the liberal end of the current Republican congressional caucus.
What I find so disturbing about Ms. Scozzafava is the rumor that if elected she intends to switch to Democrat. Not only is this a sleazy way for the Dems to ensure that, win or lose, they keep their stranglehold on Congress, but considering how much money she’s taking from the GOP, it smacks of outright fraud. I would like to see some state election authorities enact legislation addressing this type of turncoat activity, because it seems to me that in taking the funds, a candidate is in fact creating a contract with the party and with the voters to represent them in a certain way and with a particular affiliation. If he or she reneges by switching parties, then the entities who have financed the candidate’s campaign are cheated of their consideration under the contract.
I LOVE the comment above by elephant4life. You really want to frame campaign finance as a contract that is in part between DONORS and candidates? That is, we pay the money, you dance to our tune? Our campaign finance system has become sufficiently deeply corrupt at this point that I have no doubt that’s a fair description of how it often works. Republican or Democratic donors expect their servants — oh, I’m sorry, did I say servants? I mean the public servants they support — to vote R or D, respectively, regardless of any actual judgments the elected official make about what’s the best policy.
But please, can we at least try to pretend that donors “finance the candidate’s campaign” because they believe in the candidate — and are willing to let them vote as they wish once elected? That’s how the system is supposed to work (and how Justice Scalia et al. insist it does work). If you give money, and a candidate switches parties (or for that matter, quits, has an affair with a staffer, etc., etc.) you have every right to feel frustrated. But you were not “cheated of [your] consideration under [a] contract.” We’re still supposed to be living in a democracy, not an oligarchy of rich political donors — although I admit, telling the difference isn’t always easy.
How. Louisiana Democrats are more conservative than New Jersey Republicans.
And can someone please tell me why Rhode Island has two parties?
Interesting info, but some intuitive type of sort order would be helpful. California is really dusfunctional.
Elephant4Life: What I find so disturbing about Ms. Scozzafava is the rumor that if elected she intends to switch to Democrat.
Maybe you shouldn’t listen to every rumor. Especially this close to election day. Especially one floated by The Weekly Standard which has a vested interest. John McCormack was told eight ways from Sunday that Scozzafava will support Boehner.
Just because a rumor fits into your worldview, does not make it true.
“Just because a rumor fits into your worldview, does not make it true.”
And that applies however accurately predictive it is in general.
Good to know that it’s not our imagination that Massachusetts Democrats are not that liberal.
http://www.massscorecard.org/MA-Home.asp
The notion that the Dems in this state are flaming liberals is so not true — look at Arizona for crying out loud!
This just bears out how narrow the political discussion is in Massachusetts, especially compared to the rest of New England (RI being its own kind of crazy). But if you look at Maine and New Hampshire, you can really see how much wider the political discussion is there compared to Massachusetts. Really fascinating.
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