The Most Liberal Congress Ever
Nolan McCarty has come to my attention in recent years as a political scientist who does a lot of work that’s relevant to the field of political punditry — except he does it more accurately than a political scientist. As such, I’m a bit saddened to learn that he now has a blog since it used to be that those of us who’d read his book (with Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal), Polarized America, had a competitive edge over the internet-only crowd.
At any rate, it promises to make interesting reading. Here’s a post examining the steady increase in the number of liberals, as measured by the DW-NOMINATE system, in the House of Representatives.
DW-NOMINATE scores, which are based on roll call voting records, run roughly from -1 to 1 where -1 is a very liberal score and 1 is a very conservative score. So to gauge how liberal a given House is, I simply compute the fraction of members with scores that fall beneath certain thresholds. The thresholds I chose were -.3, -.4, and -.5. To give the reader some context, Charlie Rangel and Nancy Pelosi score at approximately -.5, Rahm Emanuel clocked in just below -.4, and Dan Lipinski is just a little more liberal than -.3 (sorry that part of the ideological spectrum is devoid of household names).
The growth in the number of liberals reflects the fact that the Democratic Party has been growing stronger in recent cycles, but also the fact that the Democratic caucus that’s emerged since 1995 is a more liberal party than the old one which contained many conservative white southerners.
23 Responses to “The Most Liberal Congress Ever”
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December 15th, 2008 at 9:59 am
As I said on that blog: I’m sorry, I don’t get the y axis. Its label is percentage liberal, but the numbers appear to be a scale measuring the DWI-nominate scores of somebody or other (Democrats?). Am I dumb, or is this confusing?
December 15th, 2008 at 10:04 am
What DNY said — 0.45% of house members score below -0.3 on the scale? That’s two whole congressmen! Stop the liberal train, I want to get off.
More likely case is that that’s actually 45% and the graph is mislabeled, meaning that once again MY has posted a terrible graph/chart. Nice to see the value of a philosophy degree there.
December 15th, 2008 at 10:19 am
In what universe is a blue dog liberal?
I would be best to know what the “baseline” is for liberal. As far as I can tell is someone who is not a right-wing nutcase.
Black is white as long depending on your baseline.
December 15th, 2008 at 10:21 am
This measures Congressmen in relation to each other, no? What if there are more liberals & also more conservatives? What if the conservatives are willing to filibuster 100% of the legislation/appointments they oppose & the liberals are willing to filibuster 0%? Measuring how liberal Congress is based on anything other than what it passes is pretty stupid.
December 15th, 2008 at 10:28 am
This makes no sense. Under what definition of “liberal” are a liberal from 1933 and a liberal from today being grouped together?
December 15th, 2008 at 10:55 am
Nolan McCarty explains: Sorry, my bad. Axis should be “proportion” liberal. So the last House had about 45% liberals.
Unlike Matt, he seems to read his own blog.
December 15th, 2008 at 10:56 am
Of course, the hole in this analysis is that (at least pre-financial crisis) the Overton window in US politics had shifted to the right, such that any analysis of voting is affected by a sample bias in the kinds of legislation proposed.
December 15th, 2008 at 10:57 am
It’s also worth noting that Congress =/= House. I’m actually willing to believe, though not entirely convinced that the House is unusually liberal. The Senate, however, most certainly is not.
December 15th, 2008 at 10:59 am
“Liberal” can be a very vacuous term at times. For instance, a great many of the supposedly not-so-liberal men who composed the democratic party of yesteryear, were quite a bit left of this current breed on economic issues – arguably the most important determinant.
I doubt Harry Truman supported “gays in the military” or same sex partnerships, but he supported a good many causes considerably to the left of the currents of today’s liberals: full employment; labor centric policy among others. Ditto to LBJ – his commitment to social welfare and the eradication of poverty are considerably left of today’s congressional make-up.
So, the point is, I doubt that the “liberal” bona fides of this congress. It’s a matter of definition and issue priority.
December 15th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
This study is patently absurd, though maybe you have to be a bit older than Matt to realize it. Despite the then presence of troglodyte Southern racists in the party, does anyone seriously think that today’s Congressional Democrats are more liberal than those in the ’30s (which I don’t personally remember) or the ’60s and ’70s (which I do)? Hell, LBJ would be laughed at today as a tall, drawling Dennis Kucinich. Even wide swaths of the Republican party (arguably including the domestic policies of Nixon) were to the left of today’s sorry Democrats. Just for starters, abuses of the Nixon years brought impeachment-forced resignation, the Church Committee, and FISA. Bush’s violations of the latter (amid myriad other outrages) brought Congressional yawns at best, and often complicity. We go from Bobby Kenneday as senator from NY to Wall Street Chuck Schumer, and the party has grown more liberal? We truly are in the Bizarro world.
December 15th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
I don’t doubt the (relative) liberalism of this congress, and I think Republicans have lost much of the power (if not the will) to obstruct everything. But the methodology is pretty flawed. Was the Gingrich Congress really more liberal than the New Deal congresses?
December 15th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
“Nolan McCarty has come to my attention in recent years as a political scientist who does a lot of work that’s relevant to the field of political punditry — except he does it more accurately than a political scientist.”
This statement doesn’t make any sense. Which political scientists do these things less accurately than McCarthy the political scientist? All of them? Or just “a” unnamed one? It’s nice that Yglesias is now the place to find off-handed smears of the accuracy of political science. Right before it’s admitted that most internet pundits only read things from their computer screen.
Marlowe and Will raise an important point. As meticulous and careful as the DW-NOMINATE scores are, they do suffer from a perhaps unavoidable historical relativism. That is members of Congress are scored liberal or not liberal based on a binary score of votes. So if you’re voting against Bush’s tax cuts in 2001 you’re just as liberal in that vote as if you vote for a 95% top marginal tax rate in the 1950s. The liberalism that McCarty is measuring is relative to the particular items that happen to be on the agenda during an official’s time in office. But I don’t know how one would go about finding a more universal, trans-historical standard of liberalism.
December 16th, 2008 at 7:06 am
there may be more liberals in the Pelosi House than either the Rayburn or McCormack House but but they certainly don’t act like it when it comes to economic issues
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