Is Obama the Most Liberal Senator?

by John Sides on July 19, 2008 · 3 comments

in Campaigns and elections,Legislative Politics

The National Journal says yes. Is this true? In this February post, guest blogger Sarah Binder noted that the National Journal relies on a selective set of roll call votes and does not take into account absences. A better measure is the ideological score computed by Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal (a.k.a. NOMINATE scores). Here is their analysis of where Obama, Clinton, and others fall on the NOMINATE scale. I reprint a couple of their key graphs below:

dwnom107.PNG

dwnom107dem.PNG

Obama is not the most liberal Senator. He is just slightly to the left of the average Democrat.

{ 3 comments }

Adam July 20, 2008 at 3:10 pm

What’s Sam Nunn doing back in the Congress?

John Sides July 20, 2008 at 3:13 pm

And Wellstone too, right? The graph includes some former Senators for the purposes of illustration.

Spero Melior July 21, 2008 at 12:06 am

And Lieberman is there for tragicomic effect? He’s not even a DINO anymore.

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