Benjamin G. Bishin

Representation in Congressional Campaigns: Evidence for Discounting/Directional Voting in U.S. Senate Elections

Several recent studies suggest that voters may prefer candidates who propose policies that are similar to, but more extreme than, the voters’ sincere policy preferences. This may arise either because voters vote directionally based on the direction and intensity of candidates’ proposals or, alternatively, because voters recognize that elected officials face obstacles to implementing their policy agenda and therefore discount the candidates’ policy promises. Using data from the Pooled Senate Election Study, we evaluate the discounting/directional hypothesis versus the alternative proximity hypothesis, by conducting individual-level and aggregate-level analyses of voting in 95 Senate races held in 1988–90–92. Our results support the discounting/directional hypothesis, that voters reward candidates when they present distinctly noncentrist positions on the side of the issue (liberal or conservative) favored by their constituency. These findings have important implications for understanding voting behavior, policy representation, and candidate strategies in Senate elections.

Bimodal issues, the median voter model, Legislator's ideology, and abortion

The median voter model is widely used in the public choice literature to explain legislators behavior. According to the model, if voter preferences are unimodal, a vote-maximizing legislator should mirror the position of the median voter. However, the median voter model has not been tested on bimodal issues. This paper fills this critical void by empirically testing the applicability of the median voter model on an issue which clearly meets the criteria for being bimodal: abortion. Using a variety of attitudinal measures from large sample public opinion polls and constituency demographics, this study finds that Senate voting on the 1994 Freedom of Abortion Access bill was highly related to the senators personal characteristics—especially ideology—and not to constituent opinion or demographics.

The Political Incorporation of Cuban Americans: Why Won’t Little Havana Turn Blue?

This article examines the political implications of the changing demographics of the Cuban American community. Over the past decade, pundits have predicted a massive shift in Cuban American voting behavior owing to demographic changes in the community. The authors find evidence that the attitudes of Cuban Americans have undergone significant changes, driven largely by the increased number of post-Mariel (1980) immigrants. The authors also find, however, that these dramatic changes have not yet been reflected at the ballot box, nor are they likely to be soon, owing to the slow process of immigrant political incorporation.

The Impact of Economic Versus Institutional Factors in Elite Evaluations of Presidential Progress Toward Democracy in Latin America

Elites’ support for democracy and their satisfaction with political leadership are important factors in evaluating Latin American leaders’ progress toward consolidating their democracies. However, we know surprisingly little about how elites understand or define democracy and thereby evaluate leaders in terms of progress toward democracy. Much literature on opinions of elites focuses on their relative interest in democratic values and formal institutions. But is progress in these two areas really of utmost importance to elites? To better understand elite views of democracy, the authors use new survey data in which elites assess current politicians’ progress toward democracy. They find that the importance of perceived progress in democratic values—civil rights and civil liberties—and formal institutions is minor compared to the impact of perceptions of economic progress; elites’ evaluations of democratic progress depend primarily on their perceptions of economic success and only secondarily on perceptions of achievement of democratic values.

Constituent diversity and congress: the case of NAFTA

Abstract An important finding of legislative research is that constituency variables are more important predictors of a legislator’s vote when constituent preferences are homogeneous, as opposed to when the various elements of the legislator’s constituency are pulling the legislator in opposing directions (Goff & Grier, Public Choice, 76, 5–20; Bailey & Brady, American Journal of Political Science, 42, 524–544). We examine these expectations on a highly salient vote, the 1993 senate vote on the North American Free Trade Agreement. While we find support for the view that constituency variables are more important in homogeneous than heterogeneous constituencies, we also find that by confining constituency variables to economic factors scholars overlook the importance of constituent ideology on legislator behavior in homogeneous constituencies.

When Do Legislators Defy Popular Sovereignty? Testing Theories of Minority Representation Using DOMA

What explains the behavior of legislators on bills that restrict the rights of marginalized minorities? Studies of representation typically focus on factors like party or public opinion but seldom account for theories of minority representation like electoral capture or subconstituency politics. One reason for this is that data allowing for the comparison of these theories are seldom available for U.S. House districts. We overcome this hurdle by implementing multilevel regression with post-stratification to estimate opinion on gay marriage during the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act vote. We show that subconstituency politics explains legislators’ behavior better than electoral capture, party, or public opinion.

Independently Validating Ideology Measures: A Look at NOMINATE and Adjusted ADA Scores

Measures of political ideology are central to a broad range of political science scholarship. However, despite extensive evaluation of the relative characteristics of vote-based ideology measures, little scholarship examines their validity independent of legislator behavior. Ideological validity is overlooked because all existing measures are action based. To address this gap, this article applies an instrumental-variables technique called FILTER to assess the validity of two important measures of legislator ideology: NOMINATE and interest-group ratings. The technique is also applied to investigate whether the measured action-based ideology suffers from agenda bias. The results show that the measures produce valid estimates of legislator ideology. Moreover, FILTER offers an important alternative to existing action-based measures of ideology that might be inappropriate for use in some settings, such as when the dependent variable being studied is also action based.

The impact of legislator and constituency ideology on voting on the assault weapons ban

Abstract Using variables that represent a legislators entire legal constituency, previous research by social scientists has concluded that views of the legislators constituency have little effect on how legislators vote. This question is reexamined by defining constituency as those voters most likely to vote for the legislator (i.e., members of the legislators own political party and independents). Furthermore, instead of measuring constituency by either a demographic or vote-based measure, a survey measure of the ideological identification of voters (i.e., the voters self-identification as liberal, moderate, or conservative) is introduced. It is found that the ideology of a senators electoral constituency was an important factor on the recent U.S. Senate vote to ban 19 semi-automatic assault weapons. The findings have important implications for how social scientists conceptualize and measure constituency.

Issue Salience, Subconstituency Politics, and Legislative Representation

To what extent are citizens able to control their elected officials? Does representation improve when issues become visible? Conflicting results in studies of legislative representation are frequently attributed to issue salience or subconstituency politics. However, most conclusions about the effect of issue salience rely on studies of responsiveness on issues held to be either important or visible. Consequently, we have little idea of how changes in salience serve to alter the representational relationship. To examine this question, we employ a natural experiment to exploit the sudden increase in issue visibility surrounding the consideration of the Armenian Genocide Resolution. We are unable to detect any evidence that salience (as measured by visibility) enhances responsiveness to majority preferences. Instead, salience appears to alter legislators’ sensitivity to different intense subconstituency groups in their districts.

Exit and Entrance Polling A Comparison of Election Survey Methods

We report the results of an experiment in which voters participating in the 2008 presidential election were surveyed either as they exited their voting places (a traditional exit poll) or as they waited in line to vote (an “entrance poll”). To the best of our knowledge, the efficacy of entrance polling has not been studied previously. Our data show that the entrance poll, when compared to the exit poll, produced a significantly higher cooperation rate among voters and a significantly lower item nonresponse rate. In our discussion of these results, we examine the benefits and potential complications of entrance polling.