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!

The notion that political parties are a key determinant of income inequality has been around for a long time. I suspect many non-academics take its truth for granted. Among American scholars, the notion is perhaps most closely associated with Douglas Hibbs . . .

[In his recent book, Unequal Democracy], Larry Bartels suggests that a key part of the story is different policies pursued by Democratic and Republican presidents. . . . Bartels’ argument, while by no means novel, is very much a fresh one. It is based on extensive empirical analysis of the post-World War II period. Is he correct? I think Bartels probably has it right for part of this period, but I’m not convinced that his hypothesis holds up for the other part. . . .

This relates to some ideas I had after seeing Bartels speak on his work at Columbia a couple of years ago; see here and here. In particular, in that last link, I wrote the following:

After seeing Larry Bartels present his findings on how the economy has done better, for the poor and middle class, under Democratic presidents than Republican presidents, I was puzzled. Not that it couldn’t be true, but it seemed a little mysterious, given the general sense that presidents don’t have much control over the econony–business cycles just seem to happen sometime.

Attitudes about what presidents can do for the economy

But the general perceptions about Presidents and the economy have changed over time.

I might be wrong here, not having lived through the entire postwar period, but my perception is that, during most of this time, “competence” was not an issue; rather, there was a general belief that the president could do some things, most notably help labor (for the Democrats) or business (for the Republicans).

The exception here was the 1976-1996 period, during which there was a real sense of economic incompetence or powerlessness of some presidents (Ford with his Whip Inflation Now, Carter with stagflation, the residual view of Democrats being incompetent for the economy, George H.W. Bush with the deficit and the regression, perhaps extending to Dole in 1996). Then, since 2000, we’ve returned to the general attitude that both parties have essential competence but have different goals. (Not that everyone agrees on the “competence” issue, but it seems to me that the battle is more being fought on priorities than competence–in contrast to 1992, for example.)

Back to Larry’s paper

So, the conventional wisdom based on the 1976-1996 period is that presidents can’t do much, they’re at the mercy of the business cycle, etc., which makes Bartels’s results seem like some sort of fluke, or a perhaps meaningless juxtaposition of one-off results. But taking the 1948-1972 and 2000-2004 perspectives, Bartels’s graph makes a lot of sense. From this perspective, the Democrats did their thing, and the Republicans did theirs, and you’d expect to see a big difference at the low end of the income scale. (Again, this is inherently short-term reasoning, not long-term, but as Larry pointed out in his talk, the evidence is that voters are susceptible to short-term inferences.)

In summary: we’re used to thinking of presidents as fairly powerless surfers on the global economy, able to tinker with tax rates but not much more–but thinking about the entire postwar period, there’s certainly been at least the perception that presidents can deliver the economic goods to their constituencies. So from that perspective, Larry’s curves should not be much of a surprise–at least in that the slope for Democrats goes down (i.e., poor people do better under Democratic presidents) and the slope for Republicans goes up (i.e., rich people do better under Republican presidents). The relative positions of the lines is another story, which perhaps corresponds to random alignments of the business cycle.

Perhaps Kenworthy can connect this thinking more directly to his arguments. My time frames don’t quite align with his, but it’s a similar idea of breaking the period into smaller segments.

And, to comment on my comments . . . when posting the above in 2006, I wrote, “since 2000, we’ve returned to the general attitude that both parties have essential competence but have different goals. . . . we’re used to thinking of presidents as fairly powerless surfers on the global economy, able to tinker with tax rates but not much more. . .” Things sure have changed in 2 1/2 years!

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.

- Why the polls don’t matter while the elections are ‘predictable’? Is there too much confidence in a supposely ‘Obama landslide’?

Based on the economy, Obama was predicted to get something like 53% of the two-party vote.  Due to the U.S. electoral system, if you win 53%, you will win many many states and so the Electoral College will look more like a landslide.

- Do you give any credit to this Bradley Effect?

My guess is that this pattern is less of an issue in a highly contested national election.

- Your book ends with the myth that the rich elite votes Democrat and the poor vote Republican, but does it mean that American politics are in a way a battle of elites (those in the poorest and those in the wealthiest States)?

Yes, U.S. politics is in many ways a battle of elites:  the liberal elites in the Northeast, West Coast, and Upper Midwest, versus the conservative elites in the South and the rest of the country.

- If the image of the poor, religious, gun-loving Republican is a myth, why Republicans keep using the ‘real America’ theme and talk about values of small towns in the middle of the poorest part of the country? Is more a battle of rural vs. urban?

I am not sure here, but I suspect that rural images are popular even with many Americans who live in cities and suburbs.

- And what exactly makes the upper middle class in the wealthier States vote Democrats while their peers vote Republican in other States?

The upper middle class in wealthier states are more likely to be socially liberal (even if they are economically conservative).  In poorer states, the upper middle class tends to be both economically and socially conservative.

- Why the economic slowdown benefits Democrats? Do the richest not share the view that Democrats can handle better economic issues, as the polls generally show, or do they vote against their economic interests? (sort of the opposite that What’s the Matter with Kansas said)

A bad economy makes the current administration less popular among all groups.

- Are race or inmigration the main diving lines? And if so isn’t gonna affect disproportionatelly the Obama result?

Race is a big dividing line, but the line is already there.  At this point, people of all races are reacting to the positions of the candidates and new information.

- I was intrigued by your argument that religion matters nearly as much in European election than in American ones. How could it be when here religion is out of the political campaigns and discourse and there is no question whatsoever about the faith of candidates?

I’m not sure why it’s happened, but the two parties in the U.S. differ much more on social issues than they used to.

- I’d really appreciate your comments. Actually, I liked What’s the Matter with Kansas, but I always felt there was something wrong with the picture, as in Europe the richest tend to be more conservative (althought I also attributed to the fact that, in Europe, Democrats will be probably center-right and Republicans far on the right…). Anyway, thanks to you and your book for the clarification!

I hope this is helpful to you and your readers.  I liked “What’s the Matter with Kansas” also.  That book doesn’t claim to be a statistical analysis.  What it has is analysis of the rhetoric of the Republican party and lots of discussion of the battles within different Republican factions in Kansas.  It’s important stuff.  I think that quantitative studies such as ours and qualitative studies such as Frank’s are both important.

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.

McCain’s home state (AZ) it’s at the very back, but probably its delegates have a better view than some of their Texas counterparts whose view is being blocked by a network television interview platform… but McCanin is not doing great in AZ where almost 30% of the registered voters surveyed are undecided!! wouldn’t be more important to have AZ on the floor than AK and Guam?… Just asking.

Political parties seem to apply a similar pro-cyclical behavior in their congressional election campaigns. Consider 2008. . .

It’s expected to be a good year for the Democrats, and so now should be the time for them to make some investments in new, young candidates. They should encourage lots of their incumbents to retire, because in 2008, they can win a lot of these districts without needing the incumbency advantage (estimated to be about 10% of the vote, i.e., enough to take you from 50% to 60%). Conversely, this is the time for the Republican Party to hold on to what it has, and to keep all their incumbents in, trying to hold out until 2010 when the pendulum might swing back in their favor. But we don’t see that—actually, something like 30 Republican House members are retiring this year. Republicans retiring, Democrats sticking around—that’s a recipe for big Democratic gains this year. But then in 2010, or 2014, or whatever year it is when the Democrats get wiped out—then a bunch of their incumbents will probably retire, and boy will the Democrats wished they had put in younger incumbents back in 2008 when they had a chance!

One of the difficulties here is that I’m talking about the long-term goals of the parties, but “the parties” are, to a large extent, simply their officeholders. And congressmembers’ incentives can be much different from those of the party as a whole. In particular, it makes sense that an incumbent congressmember will want to quit in a year when he or she would be facing a tough reelection battle, and when the prize for winning is to remain in the minority. Conversely, why step down when you’re facing an easy reelection and the prospect of some juicy committee assignments? So the individual officeholders have an incentive for pro-cyclical behavior, even if it harms their party’s long-term interest.

Beyond the benefits or lack thereof to the individual parties, pro-cyclical behavior would seem to increase the size of political changes, making the swings in congressional representation larger than would be expected simply based on swings in public opinion. Actually, many political scientists would consider this a good thing (an increased “swing ratio”); my point here is that some of this swing is “endogenous” in the sense of arising from pro-cyclical decisions of individual congressmembers deciding whether to run for reelection. It would be interesting to see if this happens with state legislatures as well.

We also see this in the Senate. For example, 84-year-old Frank Lautenberg is running for reelection in New Jersey. This is a Democratic year when the Democrats might do well with just about anybody. (Or maybe not; I don’t really follow New Jersey politics and am just extrapolating from national polls.) In 6 years, they’re going to need to find someone new, and at that point they might wish they had an incumbent already in the slot.