Leapfrog Representation and Extremism: A Study of American Voters and Their Members in Congress

Abstract

We consider the relationship between the preferences of American voters and the preferences of the U.S. legislators who represent them. Using an Internet-based, national opinion survey in conjunction with legislator voting records from the 109th and 110th Congresses, we show that members of Congress are more extreme than their constituents, i.e., that there is a lack of congruence between American voters and members of Congress. We also show that when a congressional legislator is replaced by a new member of the opposite party, one relative extremist is replaced by an opposing extremist. We call this leapfrog representation, a form of representation that leaves moderates with a dearth of representation in Congress. We see evidence of leapfrog representation in states and House districts and in the aggregate as well: the median member of the 109th House was too conservative compared to the median American voter, yet the median of the 110th House was too liberal. Thus, the median American voter was leapfrogged when the 109th House transitioned to the 110th. Although turnover between the 109th and 110th Senates occurred at approximately the same rate as between the 109th and 110th Houses, the Senate appears to be a more moderate institution whose median member does not move as abruptly as that of the House.

Willingness to pay and political support for a US national clean energy standard

“…[8] This result may also reflect the fact that, in some contexts, models of special interest and partisan politics may better explain Congressional voting than the median voter. [24] Individual preferences may change over the course of political debate, and further survey evidence will be necessary to update public opinion on clean energy deployment policies. At present, however, the difference between public opinion and political support that we find is consistent with the observation that a majority of Americans support clean energy and climate-change policies, while the necessary majorities in Congress do not.…”

Primaries and Candidates: Examining the Influence of Primary Electorates on Candidate Ideology

“…The trend of primary electorates choosing extreme candidates could lead to a lack of ideological congruence between members of Congress and their general election constituencies (Bafumi and Herron, 2010) as moderate voters are disincentivized from voting (Callender and Wilson, 2007), thus further reinforcing recent trends towards political polarization among both elected officials and rank-and-file voters (Stone, Maisel and Lowman, 2012).…”

“…Primaries lack party cues and attract less media coverage, so they tend to attract more politically engaged, partisan, and ideologically extreme voters than do general elections (Kaufmann, Gimpel and Hoffman, 2003;Fiorina, Abrams and Pope, 2006;Abramowitz and Saunders, 2008). These primary voters may draw candidates' attention because elected officials tend to represent the interests of engaged constituents more than disengaged constituents (Bafumi and Herron, 2010;Burden, 2004).…”

Measuring Latent Constructs in Nonprofit Surveys with Item Response Theory: The Example of Political Ideology

“…Poole andRosenthal (1997, 2007) were among the first to demonstrate measures of political ideology using IRT that went beyond party affiliation, when they generated estimates of ideology for members of Congress using a large number of floor votes. The ideology of bureaucratic agencies and federal secretaries have also been measured (Clinton et al 2012;Bertelli and Grose 2009;Chen and Johnson 2015), while others have used similar techniques to measure the political ideology of state legislatures (Shor and McCarty 2011), local elected officials (Connolly and Mason 2016), candidates for public office (Bonica 2013), and voters (Bafumi and Herron 2010). In the public sector, scholars have also sought to measure the political ideology of large public sector agencies (Clinton et al 2012;Bertelli and Grose 2009;Clinton and Lewis 2008;Chen and Johnson 2015), and others have attempted to measure the political ideology of "interest groups" (often nonprofit organizations) (Mason 2015;McKay 2008McKay , 2010Bonica 2013;Barber 2015;Poole and Rosenthal 2007).…”

“…Bonica (2013) demonstrated that Political Action Committees (PACs), those that provide funding for candidates running for office, are more ideologically moderate than Congress. Bafumi and Herron (2010) argued that voters are more ideologically moderate than those they've voted to send to Congress. Barber (2015) finds mixed results showing that PACs tend to be more moderate with their giving, while individual donors tend to support more extremist candidates for office.…”