As the 2010 Election Approaches, Incumbents Shift to the Right
In the midterm elections this year, 34 Senate seats are in play. 21 of these seats are currently filled by incumbents who served in both the 110th Congress and the 111th Congress (the current meeting of the legislative branch).
I was curious about whether we might find some interesting patterns of behavior among the 21 incumbents up for reelection this year, so I looked at each Senator’s ideological ranking in the 110th Congress and compared it with his or her ideological ranking in the 111th Congress. These rankings, determined by an algorithm based on the Senators’ voting records, assigns each Senator a position from 1 to 100 with 1 being the most liberal member of the Senate and 100 being the most conservative. As you might expect, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont is ranked 1, and Sen. Tom Coburn is ranked at 100 (actually 102, to account for some Senators who tied in their ranking).
The bar graph below shows the movement in ideological rank of each incumbent Senator running for reelection this year. As you’ll see, there’s an overall shift right among incumbents. For Democratic incumbents, the mean shift is 8.05 (that is, they’ve become on average eight positions more conservative than they were in the previous Congress). For Republican incumbents, the mean shift is 3.86.
The data doesn’t necessarily suggest that these individuals are any more conservative than they were before, nor does it tell us anything about the ideological movement of the Senate as a whole. Additionally, some of the shift rightward is actually (if counterintuitively) attributable to Democratic gains in the Senate as a result of the 2008 elections.
Nevertheless, I believe the data poses some very interesting questions about four Senators in particular: Feingold (WI), Boxer (CA), Grassley (IA), and Reid (NV). In the 110th Senate, Feingold was ranked as the most liberal in position 1. In the 111th Senate, he is ranked as the 57th most liberal. Boxer moved from position 4 to position 27; Grassley, from 63 to 83.5; and Reid, from 21 to 37.5. What’s going on with these Senators? And how are their Senate races looking?
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Comments :
May '10
Re: As the 2010 Election Approaches, Incumbents Shift to the Right
Given the environment, it seems safe to guess their Senate races are looking better than they would absent the rightward shifts you noted :)
When it's in the direction of limited government, even a nakedly political repositioning is "a good thing." What would be much, much better is if we elected truly conservative Senators who could be counted on to vote intelligently for entire terms!
Jul '10
Re: As the 2010 Election Approaches, Incumbents Shift to the Right
These senators who shifted rightward as a tactical adjustment to the prevailing mood will tack back to their default positions if they survive in November. They know from experience that you can fool all of the people some of the time and that's usually enough.