Author Archives: voteview

Now that the 114th House has conducted 66 roll call votes and the 114th Senate has voted 53 times, we now have enough data to take a very preliminary look at ideological polarization in the new Congress. Following standard practice, … Continue reading →

Below we use updated DW-NOMINATE scores to plot the House’s 266-153 vote and the Senate’s 62-36 to approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline. 28 House Democrats and 9 Senate Democrats joined all voting Republicans in supporting the measure. As seen … Continue reading →

Updated 30 January 2015 Below is the vote to elect John Boehner (R-OH) as Speaker of the House. The actual roll call was 216 for Boehner, 164 for Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), 24 Republicans voted for other Republicans, 4 Democrats voted … Continue reading →

Below we plot the first dimension DW-NOMINATE Common Space scores of the presidents in the post-war period, which we refer to as the “presidential square wave” due to its shape. An ideological score is estimated for each president throughout the … Continue reading →

Below we show the polarization of the Political Parties for the 1879 through 2014 period (46th to 113th Congresses). Polarization is measured by the distance between the means of the Democrat and Republican Parties on the first (Liberal vs. Conservative) … Continue reading →

Below we use Optimal Classification (OC) in R to plot the House’s 219-206 vote on a $1.1 trillion spending package (the so-called Cromnibus). The vote split both party caucuses, with House Republicans voting 162-67 in favor of the bill and … Continue reading →

Below we use Optimal Classification (OC) in R to plot the House’s 252-161 vote and the Senate’s 59-41 vote on approving the Keystone XL pipeline. The Senate fell one vote short of approving the measure, which was designed in part … Continue reading →

Though partisan polarization has increased dramatically in both chambers of Congress over recent decades, it has beenmore pronounced in the House than the Senate. There is reason to believe that yesterday’s midterm elections will narrow this gap, increasing the ideological … Continue reading →

Below we use Optimal Classification (OC) in R to plot the House’s 273-156 vote and the Senate’s 78-22 vote to approve President Obama’s request to arm and train Syrian rebels. As seen below, both votes split the parties, with 85 … Continue reading →

There is little question that the parties in Congress have moved ideologically further apart over recent decades. But has polarization been symmetric (with both parties moving away from the center at roughly equal rates), or has it been assymetric (driven … Continue reading →