![]() In our discussion of “Southern Democrats” and “Southern Republicans,” we defined “the South” as the 11 states that comprised the Confederacy during the Civil War, most of which were dominated politically by Democrats for generations after Reconstruction ended. (Amash left the Republican Party in mid-2019, and for most of his final term did not caucus with either major party.) Justin Amash of Michigan during the 116th Congress. Independents were analyzed as part of whichever major party they caucused with, with the exception of Rep. Lawmakers who changed parties in mid-Congress were classified by whichever label they wore for the longest time. For many years, the tradition in the House has been for speakers to vote only on very significant matters or if their vote will be decisive.) (We also included all House speakers, even if they didn’t have an analyzable voting record. We did include all other lawmakers who served at any time during a given Congress, including those who died mid-term those appointed to temporarily fill Senate seats who only served for part of a term and those who left Congress early to fill some other office, such as a Cabinet position. We excluded nonvoting delegates from the analysis, as well as lawmakers who officially served but (due to health issues, resignation or other factors) didn’t have a voting record that could be analyzed and scored for a given Congress. In mid-February 2022, we downloaded DW-NOMINATE data for all senators and representatives from the 92nd Congress (1971-72) to the current 117th Congress. Each lawmaker is assigned a value between those endpoints based on their voting record the scores are designed to be comparable between Congresses and across time. That scale runs from -1 (most liberal) to 1 (most conservative). But as Poole noted in 2017, since about 2000 that second dimension has faded in significance, to the point where congressional activity has “collapse into a one-dimensional, near-parliamentary voting structure … almost every issue is voted along ‘liberal-conservative’ … lines.”Īccordingly, like most political science work that employs DW-NOMINATE scores, this analysis focuses on the primary liberal/conservative scale. The second (“vertical”) dimension typically picks up crosscutting issues that have divided the major parties at various times in American history, such as slavery, currency policy, immigration, civil rights and abortion. The first (“horizontal”) dimension is essentially the same as the economic and governmental aspects of the familiar left-liberal/right-conservative political spectrum. Poole and Howard Rosenthal in the early 1980s.ĭW-NOMINATE places each lawmaker on a two-dimensional scale, much like a standard x-y graph. It is the latest iteration of a procedure first developed by political scientists Keith T. This analysis is based on DW-NOMINATE, a method of scaling lawmakers’ ideological positions based on their roll-call votes. (For more details on DW-NOMINATE and this analysis’ geographical definitions, read “How we did this.”) This analysis focuses on the first dimension, which is essentially the economic and governmental aspects of the familiar left-right spectrum and ranges from 1 (most conservative) to -1 (most liberal). It is designed to produce scores that are comparable across time. The Center’s analysis is based on DW-NOMINATE, a method that uses lawmakers’ roll-call votes to place them in a two-dimensional ideological space. Nearly half of House Republicans now come from Southern states, while nearly half of House Democrats are Black, Hispanic or Asian/Pacific Islander. The geographic and demographic makeup of both congressional parties has changed dramatically.Democrats on average have become somewhat more liberal, while Republicans on average have become much more conservative. ![]() Both parties have moved further away from the ideological center since the early 1970s.There are now only about two dozen moderate Democrats and Republicans left on Capitol Hill, versus more than 160 in 1971-72. Both parties have grown more ideologically cohesive.The analysis of members’ ideological scores finds that the current standoff between Democrats and Republicans is the result of several overlapping trends that have been playing themselves out – and sometimes reinforcing each other – for decades. Indeed, a Pew Research Center analysis finds that, on average, Democrats and Republicans are farther apart ideologically today than at any time in the past 50 years.īut the dynamics behind today’s congressional polarization have been long in the making. politics to decry partisan polarization in Congress. It’s become commonplace among observers of U.S. ![]()
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