Bicameralism at work

Having attended a great conference on bicameralism last weekend, I'm still very sensitive to congressional dynamics that involve actors in the two chambers explicitly taking into account each other's actions as they make their own decisions.

A great example appeared in today's Roll Call, in an article about House leadership efforts to bring a health care bill to the floor. The title of the article is "Liberals Wave the White Flag". The gist of the comment is that since Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid has come out in favor of a public option, the House doesn't need to come up with quite so liberal an option itself. Here's the key paragraph, buried midway in the story:

But Democratic leaders, and some notable liberals, have made the case that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) decision this week to try to forge ahead with a package that includes a public option relieves pressure on the House to produce a more liberal provision for negotiating leverage. Pelosi set the stage for that argument at a Friday press conference, noting that “the atmosphere has changed.”

Kennedy’s popularity in Massachusetts

I talked with a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor while I was on my Wrigley Field trip on Thursday about Ted Kennedy’s popularity in Massachusetts. I told her that based on my experience, it's more likely for a senator to be wildly popular in a small state than in a large state; what mades Kennedy unusual is that he was an incredibly popular large-state senator. Data from the 2008 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) bear out this claim.

The CCES asked respondents to rate the approval of their senators on a 1-4 scale (1 = strongly approve, 4 = strongly disapprove). This analysis is based on average the responses within each state for both senators.



The accompanying graph shows the average approval numbers (low numbers are good, high numbers are bad) plotted against (the log of) estimated state population in 2008. I have fit a lowess curve through the data, which picks up the non-linearity of the relationship nicely. (All other methods of curve fitting work here, too, and show roughly the same relationship.)

A couple of things about this graph. First, while there is considerable variation in the graph, on average small-state senators were rated better than large-state senators. Second, note the senators below the line. These are senators who had better approval ratings than you would expect, given the size of the state they represent. There are some notable outliers, including Kennedy, Obama, and Clinton. (Outliers on the other side include Craig, Lieberman, Reid, Coleman, and Dole.)

We can use the vertical distance between the senator and the lowess fit to create a "poplation-corrected approval rating." When we do that, the five most-approved-of senators (correcting for population) were

1. Kenndy
2. Johnson
3. Shelby
4. Sessions
5. Clinton

At the other end, the five least-approved-of senators (correcting for population) were

1. Craig
2. Lieberman
3. Reid
4. Dole
5. Coleman
   

Sotomayor confirmation vote

With the House in recess and the Senate on the way (and me on the way to the annual vacation to Vermont), this seemed like the perfect time to resume blogging about analyzing Congress.

The comment today is about the Sotomayor vote. A couple of weeks ago I had tweeted that I thought it possible that she would get 80 votes today, based on Lindsay Graham's likely (at that time) vote for her. If Graham voted for her, you would think that others less conservative than he would do so, as well.

Wrong. The 68-31 vote in her favor made a liar out of me. But I was wrong, as they say, for the right reason.

Turns out Graham was the biggest outlier in the final vote, by far. I make this claim relying on Keith Poole's recently-published ideological rank-ordering of the Senate and House, which are based solely on roll call votes before August. Check it out here: http://voteview.com/sen111.htm.



The accompanying graph shows the current Senate, ranked according to Keith's optimal classification analysis. The reds are Republicans and blues are Democrats. I've stacked up the nay voters and the yeah voters.

Notice there's a pretty seamless ideological explanation for the vote. There's a little raggedness near the cutting point, which you would expect. Martinez (R-Florida) makes a reasonably clean break in the vote. With Martinez the break point, the two Republicans we would have predicted to have voted for Sotomayor, but didn't, are Murkowski and Cochran. So far, so good, for a simple spatial model explanation of the vote.

Graham, of course, voted for Sotomayor. Ideologically, this leaves him hanging out there, as twelve more moderate Republicans chose to oppose her. Given Graham's rock-solid conservative credentials, it's hard to imagine this vote will hurt him with his base, and given his reasonable (and reasoned) approach to the hearings, his vote will lead some to believe --- those who don't follow Congress closely --- that he is more moderate than his overall voting record would indicate.

On to Vermont. Because of a discussion I had with a reporter today, my next post will likely be about figuring out what difference the small-state bias made in the cap-and-trade vote.

The casualty list already presages a tough 2010 for the GOP

Congress is only a week old, and already three Republican House members and four Republican senators have announced their departure from Congress in the next election. No Democrats have made similar announcements. (The only thing that comes close is the run of Democrats who are leaving Congress to join the new administration, but that's a different matter.)

Rep. Jerry Moran (R-KS) is running for the Senate; Rep. Zach Wamp (R-TN) is running for governor, and Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) is retiring. Added to this are senators Bond (MO), Brownback (KS), Martinez (FL), and Voinovich (OH). Other than Voinovich and perhaps Bond, none of these are particularly superannuated.

One of the core tenants of the "strategic politicians" theory of elections is that the behavior of the most informed and "interested" political actors well ahead of an election is what most determines the general contours of the outcomes. By conventional analysis, 2010 should be a relatively good year for Republicans, since it will be the off-year election with a Democratic presidents. And, the year has just begun --- lots more can happen. However, the early returns suggest that 2010 is considered to be a tough year for Republicans, and those in the know are beginning to get out now.

The Senate convenes, with two, count 'em two, potential challenges

The 111th Congress convenes today, and from what I can tell, this will be the first time in a long time that the Senate has been faced with two potential challenges --- to the appointment of Roland Burris to fill out Barack Obama's Illinois Senate seat and to the election of Al Franken to the Minnesota seat previously held by Norm Coleman. Each presents slightly different issues.

The Franken-Coleman controversy is an old fashioned dispute over a close election. Coleman is challenging the certification of the election by the Minnesota canvassing board, so he will not have a certificate of election when the Senate convenes today. (The Minneapolis Star-Tribute has been covering the recount exceptionally well. Here is today's article.) While there will be some words thrown around, no doubt, don't expect anything formal done today. (Roll Call [requires subscription] reports this morning that Sen. Reid will not push the issue of seating Franken today.)

The Burris controversy is tainted by the person who appointed him, Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Unlike Franken, Burris will be in DC today and will try to be seated. Like Franken, Burris still does not have a certificate of election from the Illinois Secretary of State, who is refusing to sign it, due to Blagojevich's indictment on corruption charges. So, the current center of action is actually in the Illinois Supreme Court, where Burris has filed a writ of mandamus to force the SOS to issue the certificate. The Burris controversy is much more complex than the Franken-Colman kerfuffle. Rick Hasen's Election Law Blog is by far the best place to learn about the issues and follow the unfolding analysis by a bunch of smart, and conflicted experts.

A couple of words about sources. First, the Senate's 1995 United States Senate Election, Expulsion and Censure Cases is a basic source on past cases. Second, the most current political science research on the issue is contained in Jeff Jenkins's 2005 article in Studies in American Political Development. Two take-aways: (1) Disputed election cases are now rare and (2) they tend to be resolved in non-partisan ways.

UPDATE: Since I've written this, other bloggers have produced nice summaries of the legal issues surrounding the Burris case. This posting from Michael Stern is particularly extensive and useful.