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.