The larger lesson here, however, is the power of ideology in explaining voting outcomes. Good thing I’m teaching a class on ideology in the spring!

Since Blagojevich is still the governor, he still has the right by state law to make the appointment. Remember, Ted Stevens ran for re-election even after being convicted on corruption charges (though he lost, despite being a mythic figure in Alaskan political history). Indeed, the prosecution and trial of Blagojevich is likely to take a long time. And state law imposes no deadline on the appointment, unlike other states. So he could just proclaim his innocence and wait it out. But it is difficult to imagine who would want the job if it meant being appointed by Blagojevich now.

What’s interesting is the role of ideology in the appointment process. My research on state legislative ideology revealed how remarkable Blagojevich was in the context of the Illinois Democratic Party. Given his Congressional and state legislative voting record, he ranks in the more conservative third of his party. See here for more details. (Of course, he’s no Lisa Madigan, who is one of the most conservative Democrats in the party.)

If the Governor resigns or is impeached, Lt. Governor Pat Quinn will be elevated to the governorship and acquire the right to make the appointment. This is potentially consequential because of two factors. First, according to the indictment, Blagojevich was considering nominating himself if others wouldn’t “play ball” and give him or his wife some plums in return for the pick. Given that nobody would be stupid enough to make a deal with a governor that has been under investigation for years, and combine that with a governor crazy enough to believe he could make a run for President in 2016 (!), that self-pick was indeed a possibility.

So Blagojevich’s indictment prevents his elevation of himself (or anyone else), clearing the way for a more liberal pick by Pat Quinn. Quinn does not have a voting record, so we can not (yet) be sure of his ideological leanings. But making the “conservative” prediction that (s)he will be about as liberal as a median Democrat indicates that his pick, if made on ideological grounds, would more conservative than the pick Blagojevich would have made were the choice his.

My bad in not screening this more carefully before posting. In defense of Subramanian and Perkins, they sent me the paper and it was my idea to blog it. They were planning all along to do more systematic analysis of the raw data (which they haven’t yet received).

S. V. Subramanian and Jessica Perkins write:

The prevalence of poor self-rated health was substantially higher among Democrats (25.8%) as compared to Republicans (8.5%). Lower prevalence of poor health among Republicans was also observed in analyses stratified by poverty, education or race. The prevalence of self-rated poor health among poor Democrats or Black Democrats or Democrats with less than high school education were 3 – 14 times higher than comparable Republicans, suggesting that the observed differences in health status by political ideology may not be due to confounding by race or socioeconomic status:

These patterns remain in conditional linear regression models where self-rated health is modeled as a function of political ideological bent (ranging from strongly Democrat to strongly Republican) adjusted for age, sex, race, marital status, income, poverty, education, smoking and religious affiliation.

We also found that more than twice as many Democrats smoke (16.7%) compared to Republicans (7.1%). The prevalence of smoking among poor, less than high school education, or Black Democrats is 3 to 20 times the smoking prevalence among Republicans (see above).

The observation that Republicans enjoy better health status may reflect the core Republican value of individual responsibility, which could translate into increased adherence to health-promoting behaviors. It is also likely that Republicans tend to exhibit greater religiosity compared to Democrats.5 This could lead to health promoting social conditions, such as enhanced social ties and networks, in part facilitated through increased attendance in places of worship.

Our observations should not be interpreted to suggest that a Republican government necessarily equals better health. It would be erroneous to draw macro inferences based on individual-level correlations. Indeed, the question of which type of political ideology, reflected at the government-level, is better for population health or for reducing health disparities are entirely different queries. At the same time, our findings suggest that certain aspects of Republican ideology may implicitly be health enhancing for the individual. The healthier status of Republicans might also explain, perhaps, why they place lower priority on health care.

Interesting. S.V. said they’re waiting to get the raw data so they can run logistic regressions.

P.S. Let me add a few thoughts based on the comments below and at my other blog:

1. To the extent that difference in smoking rates are that large, this would be a big part of the story. But are smoking rates really so low among those groups of Republicans? Perhaps some mistake? I’d really want to look into this before going further.

2. To the extent that the above (or similar) patterns are actually occurring, I think they’re interesting, even if they’re explained by reporting bias or by experiences or by differences between people in big cities and elsewhere, or whatever. As S.V. noted in his article, differences in perceived health–even if explainable by biases–could result in differences in attitudes toward health policy in general.

So are we a centrist country, or a right-of-center one? I think the latter, because the mean to which most Americans revert tends to be more conservative than liberal. . . . nearly twice as many people call themselves conservatives as liberals (40 percent to 20 percent), and Republicans have dominated presidential politics—in many ways the most personal, visceral vote we cast—for 40 years. Since 1968, Democrats have won only three of 10 general elections (1976, 1992 and 1996). . . . In California, at least one poll suggests that social conservatives may pass an anti-gay-marriage ballot proposition next month . . .

And here’s Alter:

Jon Meacham is right that by the standards of a European-style welfare state, we will always be a relatively conservative country. But closer to home, the norm has not been consistently conservative over the course of the 20th century. If anything, the nation was more often center-left. Democrats controlled the House of Representatives—the “People’s House”—for six straight decades between 1930 and 1994 (with only a short exception). While many were Southern conservatives on race, the huge chunks of progressive legislation they swallowed over many years could choke an elephant. . . .

A methodological comment

And now here’s me. Before getting to the data on voters’ ideologies, let me make a brief methodological comment. Meacham’s point that Republicans have been winning presidential elections is relevant; in fact, before 1994 there was an ongoing discussion within political science as to how the Republicans were consistently winning the presidency while being in the minority in party identification and congressional voting. (From 1994-2004, the two parties split the congressional vote roughly evenly. From 1950-1992 and again in 2006 (and probably in 2008 as well), it’s been a pretty consistent 55% for Dems and 45% for Reps. See the lower graph at this link.) So, yes. But Meacham’s comparison is misleading in that he’s treating the election outcomes as yes/no measures of public opinion. But surely if the essentially-tied 1968, 1976, and 2000 elections tell us anything about public opinion, it is that it was evenly divided in these years, not that America was left or right. Counting the winner is a common mistake people make in studying elections. Yes, for policy concerns it is the winner that matters more than the vote margin, but for studying public opinion it is a different story.

A more important point, though, which both Meacham and Alter raise in different ways, is that ideology is relative to current standards; given that the parties can shift positions (if only gradually at times), it is no surprise that they find themselves not too far from current voters. For example, is it really a sign of conservatism that 50% of Californians think gay marriage is OK? Similarly, if Obama raises the tax rate on the top bracket to 40%, would this really represent a triumph of liberalism? The center has moved a lot, in different ways, over the past few decades.

And now for some data

From Michael Herron and Joe Bafumi (and in chapter 8 of our book), here are estimates of the distributions of voters, House members, and senators on a common scale:

House members and senators’ positions are estimated based on their votes in Congress. Voters’ positions are estimated based on some survey questions where people were asked their views on a number of issues that had also been voted on in Congress. As you can see, elected representatives are generally more extreme than voters. (See here for versions of the above graph broken down by red, purple, and blue states.)

In light of recent American politics, this pattern makes sense: congressmembers generally vote with their parties, very few conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans remain in the House or the Senate, and, as Delia and I have shown, voters’ positions on issues are much more of a mixed bag. Voters may be to the left of the Democratic party or to the right of the Republican party on specific issues, but, on the whole, most voters don’t have that sort of ideological consistency.

More data on voters’ ideologies, this time in comparison to how they perceive Bush and Kerry, is in chapter 9 of our book, originally from my paper with Jeff Cai. Here’s the graph showing how a random sample of a thousand or so Americans in October, 2004, perceived Bush, Kerry, and themselves on a set of economic and social issues (i.e., respondents were asked about particular issues, not about general “liberal” or “conservative” labels):

There was a lot of spread; on average, though, voters saw themselves as between the two candidates. (See the graph on the right, in which K and B represent respondents’ average assessments of where Bush and Kerry stood on these issues.)

At the beginning of the year I had an exchange with an economist who interpreted the polls to say that American opinion is to the left of the middle of the Democratic party. His point was that, although Americans are much more likely to label themselves as conservative than liberal, but they are more liberal when you look at particular issues such as health insurance and whether the rich pay too little in taxes. When you look at a large basket of issues, however, you find the voters to be between the two parties, as is indicated in our graphs above.

Voters and nonvoters

Finally, we should distinguish between political positions of voters and of Americans in general. As Nagler and Leighley have discussed, nonvoters differ systematically from voters:

The ideological distribution of voters and non-voters in 2004 is fairly similar to that in 1972: moderates are most under-represented, while conservatives are over-represented. Importantly, the magnitude of these differences increases between 1972 and 2004. . . . these differences on class-based issues are enduring and increasing.

For the question, What should President Obama (or McCain) do?, the opinions of nonvoters aren’t so relevant. But for statements about America, compared to other countries with higher voter turnout, it’s worth keeping these differences in mind.

In conclusion

Both Meacham and Alter have useful perspectives on recent American political history, and the data we’ve looked at don’t directly address the “center-right” vs. “center-left” controversy: these terms only make sense when compared to some contemporary standard. But the evidence, both from elections and from polls, supports the commonsensical idea that the two major parties are far enough apart that, at least in the short term, voters can move policy as far as they want to the left or to the right by consistently voting for Democrats or Republicans. Either party, when elected, has to balance its policy goals with its desire not to move too far away from the center.

That said, the success of an administrative policy depends on more than where it stands on a left-right scale. For example, when it came to implementing conservative policies, Reagan had more success with tax cuts than with budget cuts.

My strategy is to make my points using graphs.

But state legislators have been–unfairly in my opinion–left out. This is despite the fact that Democrats and Republicans across state legislatures are far more diverse than are the parties across state congressional delegations. Just think of Louisiana and South Carolina Democrats, and compare them to Connecticut and Massachussetts Republicans.

My research on state legislatures in the past year has been aimed at addressing this problem. The key issue is that state legislative agendas are very different, so comparing them is very difficult. I get around this problem using two techniques: 1) relying on state legislators who “graduate” by being elected to Congress later in their careers (like Obama), and 2) the Project Votesmart NPAT questionnaire asked of candidates for Congress and state legislatures for the past decade.  Doing so has allowed me to put all members of Congress and incumbent state legislators for most states on a common scale since approximately the mid 1990.

This research is personally fascinating for me as a relative newcomer to the Land of Lincoln. My home city’s and state’s politics are, umm, legendary, and do not lack for colorful characters.

But, in this election year, the most interesting current or former state legislator is undoubtedly Senator Barack Obama from Illinois. While the National Journal has rated him the most liberal member of the Senate in 2007, the methodology that generated this result is suspect (as it was in 2004). I’d turn instead to the results of the far superior Poole-Rosenthal NOMINATE ideal point estimation algorithm, which finds Obama to be one of the more, but not the most, liberal Senators (just slightly to the left of Senator Clinton).

But what about Obama’s service in the Illinois General Assembly representing Hyde Park? How liberal was he then? So far, it’s been quite difficult to tell. Of course, both sides of the political debate have strong incentives to spin his record; the Democrats want to portray him as more centrist, the Republicans more liberal. During the primary campaign, Clinton attempted to critique Obama as insufficiently liberal, pointing to his voting “present” on a number of controversial topics.

So what’s the truth? The answer: Obama as an Illinois state senator was very liberal, but there were others substantially more liberal still. Of all 295 incumbents who served from 1996-2004 in Illinois, State Senator Obama ranked in the 14th percentile on my liberalism scale. In the Democratic party, he ranked in the 27th percentile. Comparing Obama to all incumbent state legislators in the United States in the mid 1990s to the mid 2000′s, he was in the top 11th percentile. He was about as liberal as James Meeks, pastor and Illinois state Senator. Obama was more liberal than Emil Jones, the president of the Senate and one of Obama’s political mentors, is not as liberal as his protege, ranking in the middle of his party for liberalism, and in the top quarter of the Legislature as a whole. Michael Madigan, the Speaker of the Assembly, is slightly more liberal than Obama, ranking in the top 16 percent of his party and in the top 8 percent of the legislature as a whole.

It appears statewide-office holding Democrats tend to be far more conservative than their purely legislative colleagues, which makes sense given how liberal Cook County is relative to the state as a whole. Rod Blagojevich, current governor (and former state legislator and member of Congress), is a rather conservative Democrat, ranking in the top third of his party for leaning to the right (but in the top third of overall legislative liberalism). Lisa Madigan, current Attorney General, former legislator, and potential future gubernatorial candidate (not to mention Michael Madigan’s daughter), is interesting in her rather extreme conservatism for a Democrat. She is in the rightmost 1% of the party, and even in the top 12% of the legislator as a whole. That is to say, she is more conservative than many Republicans in the legislature. She is even more conservative than most state legislators around the country.

I have examined Democrats in this post, but I’ll look at Republicans soon, too.

Technical footnote: in the interests of brevity, I’ve ignored here the fact that these scores are estimated, and thus are measured with error. However, it turns out that these errors are relatively small, thanks to the hundreds or more roll call votes legislators can expect to cast in their career.

What struck me was the similarity of this to the “voting patterns of the rich” map from our book:

I wonder what data from Wal-Mart from Wal-Mart would look like. Maybe like one of the lower of the two maps? I’m not sure, though, since, even at Wal-Mart, buyers of political books are more politically active and thus maybe more like “rich people” in their red-blue divisions.

Party identification and self-defined liberalism/conservatism are increasingly correlated with positions on specific issues. The increases in correlations have been highest for moral issues. Issue positions have also become increasingly correlated with each other–but the increases have been smaller than the increased correlations with party ID and liberal/conservative ideology. Correlations between pairs of issues have increased by about 2% per decade, on average, while correlations of issues with party or ideology have increased by about 5% per decade (again, on average). The data come from the National Election Study.

Our story: voters are sorting themselves into parties and ideologies based on their issue attitudes; having done this sorting, they are aligning themselves slightly with their new allies.

Anyway, here’s an interesting bit, having to do with how people view businesses in America: Nearly two-thirds of respondents say corporate profits are too high, but, “more than seven in ten agree that ‘the strength of this country today is mostly based on the success of American business’ – an opinion that has changed very little over the past 20 years.”

Everybody loves Citibank

People like business in general (except for those pesky corporate profits) but they love individual businesses, with 95% having a favorable view of Johnson and Johnson (among those willing to give a rating), 94% liking Google, 91% liking Microsoft, . . . I was surprised to find that 70% of the people were willing to rate Citibank, and of those people, 78% had a positive view. I mean, I don’t have a view of Citibank one way or another, but it would seem to me to be the kind of company that people wouldn’t like.

Professionals vs. working class

Now here’s where it gets really interesting. The Pew report broke things down by party identification (Democrat or Republican) and by “those who describe their household as professional or business class; those who call themselves working class; and those who say their family or household is struggling.”

Republicans tend to like corporations, with little difference between the views of professional-class and working-class Republicans. For Democrats, though, there’s a big gap, with professionals having a generally more negative view, compared to the working class:

A puzzling pattern

There’s a pretty consistent pattern across the entire table which I don’t fully understand, that goes as follows:

- For some corporations (Halliburton, Walmart, Exxon, McDonald’s, Pfizer, Coke), the working-class Democrats are much less supportive than the working-class Republicans. For these corporations, there is almost no difference between professional and working-class Republicans. The only exception is Coke, which was viewed much less favorably by professional-class than working-class Republicans.

- For the others (Citibank, GM, Coors, American Express, Target, Starbucks), working-class Democrats had views that were similar to or more favorable than their Republican counterparts. And for these, there was a consistent pattern of much stronger favorability by professional than working-class Republicans.

I can come up with a story in each individual case but I don’t really have a good way of thinking about all these together. (Also, for some reason, the report doesn’t give the responses for those who say their families are “struggling.” Perhaps the sample sizes were too small.)

One more bit

Respondents were asked how concerned they were about business corporations and government “collecting too much personal information about people like them.” In general, Democrats and Independents were more concerned about both.

80% of Democrats and Independents were concerned about business collecting personal information and 65% were concerned about government. Among Republicans, 60% were concerned about business collecting the information and only 40% concerned about government. The survey is from 2007; perhaps Republicans’ views about government snooping will change if there is a Democratic administration.

Also, people with higher income and higher education have “less concern about government data collection, while lower income is associated with higher concern. Income and education did not affect opinions about businesses collecting data.” The bit about higher status people trusting the government more makes sense and is consistent with other survey results I’ve seen, but I’m surprised that there isn’t a similar pattern regarding concern about businesses. Perhaps there are different patterns among the parties. The data are downloadable from Pew’s website so you can go crunch the numbers yourself it you’d like.

1. What evidence did we use to estimate ideology of voters and congressmembers?

House members and senators’ positions are estimated based on their votes in Congress. Voters’ positions are estimated based on some survey questions where people were asked their views on a number of issues that had also been voted on in Congress.

2. Political ideology is not just left-right; it’s multidimensional.

True. Studies have found that legislators’ positions can be captured pretty well on a single left-right dimension, but voters are much more diverse in their views. Basically, what Joe and Michael are doing is placing voters on the left-right scale that is determined by legislative votes.

3. Commenter Ctate writes, “The graphs suggest that there are members of Congress — perhaps several of them — who are noticeably more liberal than any voters. Living as I do in Berkeley, I [Ctate] find it pretty unlikely that there are multiple legislators in office who are MORE liberal than my local community.”

The distributions are scaled to be the same size. So the question is whether in a random sample of 435 Americans, you’d expect to see anyone further to the left than the leftmost congressmember. The answer to that appears to be no.

4. But, still, are congressmembers really more extreme than voters?

Maybe, maybe not. The ideologies estimated by Joe and Michael (and graphed in our book) are scaled based on actual votes. So if your far-left or far-right friends have extreme views on issues that don’t come up in Congress, they won’t show up in this analysis.

Summary

The measurement issues here are real. How “left” or “right” you are depends on what questions you are asked. I think Joe and Michael did a good job (which is why we got graphs from them to use in our book), and there’s room for more to be done.

House members and senators’ positions are estimated based on their votes in Congress.  Voters’ positions are estimated based on some survey questions where people were asked their views on a number of issues that had also been voted on in Congress.  As you can see, elected representatives are generally more extreme than voters.

Polarization in red, purple, and blue states

We also looked at these distributions among Republican, battleground, and Democratic states (categorized based on their presidential voting patterns in 2000 and 2004). Geographic polarization is strong, especially in the Senate:

Voters in Republican and Democratic states are slightly more conservative and liberal, respectively, on the issues. Elected representatives are more geographically polarized: winner-take-all elections generally magnify differences that are already there. In a strongly Democratic-leaning state, it is likely that both senators will be Democrats and will be on the left side of the political spectrum. Such a state will also typically have many strongly Democratic congressional districts. The reverse pattern holds in Republican states.

More detail is in chapter 8 of the book, and lots of other information is in an article by Joe Bafumi and Michael Herron.