Legislators like Michele Bachmann and Alan Grayson become nationally infamous for their provocative behavior, yet there is little scholarly attention to such infamy. This paper examines the predictors of congressional infamy, along with its electoral consequences. First, infamy is measured through the frequency with which internet users conduct searches of legislators’ names, paired with epithets attacking their intelligence or sanity. Then, ideological extremism and party leadership positions are shown to be the best statistical predictors. The electoral consequences of infamy follow: infamous legislators raise more money than their lower-profile colleagues, but their infamy also helps their challengers to raise money. In the case of House Republicans, there appears to be an additional and direct negative effect of infamy on vote shares. The fundraising effect is larger in Senate elections, but there is no evidence of direct electoral cost for infamous senatorial candidates.
From a new paper by political scientist Justin Buchler. Here is an ungated copy. To my knowledge, it is the first scholarly work in political science to include the phrase “batshit.” I also heartily endorse the use of Ozzy song titles in academic research.
If I told you that Buchler’s Google search method identified Michele Bachmann as the most “infamous” member of the House, you might say, “Duh.” But can you guess the most infamous senator? See Table 2.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Two things strike me immediately about this. First off, while the abstract suggests that they discovered nothing more than the obvious, you really can’t say its true until someone’s compiled the evidence – so kudos for that. Second; I guessed Al Franken, but Boxer? Really?
He got lucky he did the 111th. If Santorum was still in the Senate, he’d have to have somehow modified his methods to account for his, uh, frothy discharge problem.
It would be interesting to see if there is a gender effect here. Three of the four people listed in the text for having all seven epithets are women (Palin, Bachmann, and Christine O’Donnell). Also, there seems to be a disproportionate number of women toward the top of the House list. Seems like there could be a direct or conditional (interaction with extremism?) gender effect.
franken’s and backmann’s infamy differ for one reason other than franken’s comedic objectives (p. 9).
one of them is bats**t crazy.
John,
It is remotely possible that some other political scientist has used the word, “batshit,” in a paper. Besides, I had to censor it. However, I am quite certain that this paper has the first ever political science use of the phrase, “zoological scatology.”
rmbarron,
Yes, Boxer is in a three-way tie for second place in the Senate. Given her strident personality, this didn’t surprise me. I was more surprised that Patty Murray was also part of that three-way tie. (Jim DeMint’s status should surprise nobody). I attribute Murray’s brush with infamy to a very closely-watched 2010 campaign.
Brad,
Editorial policy might have required me to refer to that particular former Senator as, “Sant***m.” After all, I had to use, “bats**t.”
lmd,
The gender effect is a possibility, but the mechanism is unclear. Given the kinds of statements made by Bachmann, Palin and O’Donnell, I don’t think anyone should be surprised that they tied with Glenn Beck for first place. The question is: what about people like Louie Gohmert? He scored pretty highly, with four epithets, but is he really any less inflammatory than Bachmann, Palin or O’Donnell? Probably not. However, he is less well-known. I suspect that if he had a higher profile, he would get as many epithets, but Bachmann may have an elevated profile partly because of her gender. So, her infamy may be a predictable result of the interaction between her behavior and her public profile, but her profile may be partially a function of her gender. Of course, the complication there is someone like Virginia Foxx, who is significantly less infamous than Bachmann, probably as extreme in her rhetoric, and a woman. Maybe there is an age/appearance effect too, though.
Justin,
Thanks for the taking the time to respond. I think there is a potential mechanism to explain why women would be more likely to appear on this list. Research finds that gender stereotypes lead people to view female leaders as less competent. If stereotypes about intelligence play into that it could lead to female members of Congress being more likely to be labeled as “stupid” or “idiots.” Similarly, if women are stereotyped as more emotional than men, it could explain the use of “crazy” or “insane.” I note this because by my count 6/17 (35%) of the Members of Congress (MCs) on the House list with two or more epithets are congresswomen while 12/36 (33%) of the MCs on the full House list are congresswomen. In the 111th Congress, by my count, only 19% of the MCs were women. It seems to me there is thus potential for an explainable gender effect. That point aside, I think you’ve done some pretty creative and interesting research here.
lmd,
I’m glad you liked the paper.
I would not read gender stereotypes into the epithets, though. There is a general tendency in political dialog to apply epithets like “idiot” and “crazy” to anyone with whom one disagrees, regardless of gender. To demonstrate this point, take a look at a more low-brow blog sometime. Then again, John probably brought down the brow-level of this blog a few notches by publicizing a paper that has been known informally as “the batshit paper.” Not that I don’t appreciate it…
As for the House numbers, there are slightly more women than we would expect due to random chance, but not by much. However, don’t ignore the Senate. 27 Senators made “the batshit list.” Of them, 3 were women, and 24 were men. If there is a gender effect, it is not particularly robust. To be sure, the Senate and House results differed in several respects, but at the very least, this suggests that any gender effect cannot be that strong.
However, let’s return to the House “batshit list.” Consider the women with at least two epithets, as you suggest. Are there any who have more epithets than you would expect if they had been men? Let’s go through them briefly:
1) Michele Bachmann. To quote John, “Duh.”
2) Nancy Pelosi. Imagine if Gavin Newsom (to keep the San Francisco thing in play) had been Speaker from 2007-2011, and that he had been as powerful as Pelosi (stop laughing, it is just a thought experiment). Do you think he would have been subject to less demonization than Pelosi? How infamous would he have been as a result? I doubt that he would have been significantly less infamous.
3) Maxine Waters. This one is another no-brainer.
4) Sheila Jackson-Lee. I was actually surprised that she didn’t have more epithets.
5) Virginia Foxx. Ditto.
6) Marsha Blackburn. Ditto.
So, of the women on the list, who had more epithets than we would have expected had they been men?
I see your point, and I’m willing to concede that the disproportionate number of women on the list may be a coincidence or explained by something else. That said, this morning’s news that a fellow member of Congress criticized Debbie Wasserman-Schultz for not being a “lady” on the House floor suggests confrontational rhetoric by women may be viewed differently than rhetoric by men. I agree that there are explanations for why many of the congresswomen appear on your list. I guess my question would be why congressmen who are equally ideologically extreme as a Marsha Blackburn or involved in a scandal like Maxine Waters don’t appear at the same rate.
lmd,
I have a slightly different interpretation of the Wasserman-Shultz/West dust-up. First, I don’t think that her original statement was anywhere near as inflammatory as the rhetoric of most of the people on my list, and I don’t think that West’s response was really about anything other than partisan warfare taken to a personal level. West was over the top, and if I do another round for the 112th Congress, West will probably rank very highly (in fact, a quick check now yields three epithets for him– idiot, crazy and nuts). One can make a reasonable argument that there was some sexism in the specific form of his over-the-top rhetoric, but I think he would have been equally over-the-top if Wasserman-Schultz’s words had come from a man. He just would have been over-the-top in a different way. Just look at how he talks about Obama. West’s rhetoric is ALWAYS over-the-top. That’s just who he is. He is only a few months into his first term, but if he sticks around for a while, his infamy will only grow.
As for Marsha Blackburn, whom did you have in mind? Remember, ideological extremism is a statistical predictor of infamy, but my argument in the paper is that the underlying causal factors are either style-driven or stature-driven, and ideological extremism is simply a predictor of a provocative style, hence the statistical association. I think her style is quite comparable to someone like Paul Broun, who had the same epithets as Blackburn, with the only difference being that Broun had “idiot” in both sweeps, whereas Blackburn only had epithets in sweep 1. So who, specifically, is the rhetorical equivalent of Marsha Blackburn, but with fewer epithets for no logical reason other than gender?
One final point about Maxine Waters– take a look at the dates of the sweeps. She had epithets before the scandal really broke. Her infamy comes from an aggressive style more than anything else.