On the Institutional Consequences of Partisan Polarization

This blog is devoted to the relationship between political ideas and political institutions. Nowhere in Texas government is the relationship more evident than in the Texas House of Representatives. Created as the “people’s branch,” the Texas House is supposed to represent the people who inhabit the legislative district. With the polarization of the parties, the consequences for representation are great. This is especially true when there is a shift in partisan representation in the House (e.g., a Democrat is replaced by a Republican). Notice what happened between 2009 and 2011 in the Texas House when several Democrats were replaced by Republicans.

HD	Name	Party	Lib-Con 2009	Name	Party	Lib-Con 2011	Difference
21	Allan Ritter	Dem	0.15	Allan Ritter	Rep	0.32	0.17
11	Charles Hopson	Dem	0.05	Charles Hopson	Rep	0.34	0.29
69	David Farabee	Dem	0.06	Lanham Lyne	Rep	0.45	0.39
45	Patrick Rose	Dem	-0.02	Jason Issac	Rep	0.54	0.56
12	Jim McReynolds	Dem	-0.01	James White	Rep	0.67	0.68
78	Joe Moody	Dem	-0.31	Dee Margo	Rep	0.38	0.69
52	Diana Maldonado	Dem	-0.31	Larry Gonzales	Rep	0.43	0.74
106	Kirk England	Dem	-0.15	Rodney Anderson	Rep	0.60	0.75
3	Mark Homer	Dem	0.00	Irwin Cain	Rep	0.77	0.77
1	Stephen Frost	Dem	-0.17	George Lavender	Rep	0.63	0.80
33	Solomon Ortiz	Dem	-0.42	Raul Torres	Rep	0.39	0.81
35	Yvonne Gonzalez-Toureilles	Dem	-0.37	Jose Aliseda	Rep	0.47	0.84
134	Ellen Cohen	Dem	-0.37	Sarah Davis	Rep	0.48	0.85
133	Kristi Thibaut	Dem	-0.36	Jim Murphy	Rep	0.52	0.88
93	Paula Pierson	Dem	-0.41	Barbara Nash	Rep	0.48	0.89
85	Joe Heflin	Dem	-0.12	Jim Landtroop	Rep	0.78	0.90
107	Allen Vaught	Dem	-0.36	Kenneth Sheets	Rep	0.59	0.95
101	Robert Miklos	Dem	-0.42	Cindy Burkett	Rep	0.57	0.99
102	Carol Kent	Dem	-0.40	Stefanie Carter	Rep	0.61	1.01
47	Volinda Bolton	Dem	-0.53	Paul Workman	Rep	0.53	1.06
34	Abel Herrero	Dem	-0.70	Connie Scott	Rep	0.38	1.08
96	Chris Turner	Dem	-0.31	William "Bill" Zedler	Rep	0.82	1.13
57	Jim Dunnam	Dem	-0.59	Marva Beck	Rep	0.62	1.21
117	David Leibowitz	Dem	-0.70	John Garza	Rep	0.54	1.24

Italics=Tea Party Endorsed Candidates

Now, let’s consider what happened to the ideology of the representative as the shift from a Democratic House member to a Republican House member occurred. The least change occurred in the two representatives who switched parties (Allan Ritter and Charles Hopson), but their scores were more conservative in 2011 than in 2009. The most dramatic shift occurred in HD- 117, where David Leibowitz was replaced by John Garza. Leibowitz was quite liberal in his voting record, and Garza was quite conservative in his voting record. HD-117, which is located in western Bexar County, is barely Republican in its voting record. One indication of the district’s ideology is the Texas Weekly Index (TWI), which is the difference between the average vote for statewide Republicans and the average for statewide Democrats in each district in contested statewide general elections in 2008 and 2010. The Texas Weekly Index (TWI) for HD-117 was

-4.94 percent. The average HD is more Republican with an index of -17.1 percent.

Another measure is a calculation by Professor Mark Jones that indicates how well matched the ideology of a member of the Texas House is to the voting population in his or her district. According to Jones:

The graph plots the 150 members of the Texas House during the 2009 legislative session on two dimensions. The first dimension (Y-axis) is the representative’s Liberal-Conservative Score based on their voting record in the House, ranging in theoretical value from -1.0 (extreme liberal) to 1.0 (extreme conservative).

The second dimension (X-axis) accounts for the ideological partisanship of the district and is calculated using the average Republican share of the two-party vote in the election for railroad commissioner in 2004, 2006 and 2008. Given the limited information voters possess regarding the railroad commissioner candidates, this vote tends to be based principally on voters’ partisan-ideological preferences. For each district, the percentage of the two-party vote won by the Republican railroad commissioner candidate in the district is subtracted from the percentage of the two-party vote won by this same candidate state-wide. These values are then summed and divided by three to create the District Partisan Voting Index (PVI). The higher the value for the District PVI, the more Republican/Conservative the district is; while the lower the value, the more Democrat/Liberal the district is. Here, the actual values for the District PVI range from -41 to 22.

Finally, in the figure a dashed line (a Lowess curve) represents where we would expect a representative’s Liberal-Conservative Score to be, relative to their district’s partisan voting profile based on a statistical analysis of all 150 representatives. Representatives located above the dashed line have a voting record in the House that is more conservative than we would expect based on the partisan-ideological profile of their district, while representatives located below the line have a voting record that is more liberal than we would expect. Democratic representatives are identified by a blue dot and Republicans a red dot.

And here is the graph plotting each representative and his or her district’s PVI:

Among the Democratic representatives in the 81^st Texas legislature, the outliers are Herrero, Leibowitz, Hochberg, and Kent. Among the Republicans are Aycock, Christian, Harper-Brown, and Kleinschmidt. Professor Jones notes:

In the figure, the eight representatives whose respective Liberal-Conservative Score is most at odds with the partisan-ideological profile of their district are identified by name. The highest degree of ideological disconnect between a representative and their district is found in the case of Linda Harper-Brown (HR-105, Irving), who is substantially more conservative than her district’s level of ideological partisanship would suggest she would be. She is followed in this ranking of representative-district partisan-ideological discontinuity by David Leibowitz (HR-117, San Antonio), Scott Hochberg (HR-137, Houston), Wayne Christian (HR-9, Center), Abel Herrero (HR-34, Corpus Christi), Tim Kleinschmidt (HR-17, Austin), Carol Kent (HR-102, Dallas) and Jimmie Aycock (HR-54, Killeen). All four Republicans and all four Democrats are respectively more conservative and more liberal than their legislative district’s partisan-ideological profile would indicate. It is very important, however, to keep in mind that the replacement of these representatives by either a co-partisan or a rival-party member would not automatically lead to the presence of a representative whose Liberal-Conservative Score would be more in concert with the partisan-ideological profile of the district.

In contrast to the above-mentioned representatives, half a dozen House members possess a Liberal-Conservative Score located right along the dashed line, indicating a near-perfect match between their legislative floor voting behavior and their district’s partisan-ideological preferences. They are Democrats Armando Martinez (HR-39, Weslaco), Marisa Marquez (HR-77, El Paso) and Richard Peña Raymond (HR-42, Laredo), and Republicans Frank Corte Jr. (HR-122, San Antonio), Joe Straus (HR-121, San Antonio) and Rob Eissler (HR-15, The Woodlands).

He concludes that:

A significant disconnect between a representative’s floor voting record and their district’s partisan-ideological orientation does not necessarily indicate a crisis of representation. However, the presence of this type of incongruity does suggest a potential gap between a representative’s behavior on the House floor and the preferences of a majority of his/her constituents that may be worthy of greater scrutiny by these constituents.

So, with the replacements for the Democrats noted in the table above, are the current occupants of the office more in line with the partisan-ideological orientation of their districts? Or, has the polarization of the parties led to a liberal Democrat being replaced by a conservative Republican, resulting in an even greater discrepancy between the elected representative and his or her district?

Let’s just consider HD-117 as an example. According to the TWI, the district is slightly conservative. According to Jones’ partisan-ideological orientation (PVI), it’s slightly liberal (about -.6 by my calculations from the graph). So the question becomes are voters in HD-117 represented more accurately by Jose Garza than by David Leibowitz? I would have to say that they are not if the distance between the district’s voting/ideological preference and the representative’s ideology is an accurate reflection of representation. What do you think?