Representation in the U.S. House:

The Link Between Constituents and Roll Calls in the 108th-

111th Congress’sChris Tausanovitch & Chris Warshaw

May 19, 2011CCES Conference

Survey Respondents Policy Items

2006 CCES 30,000 18

2008 CCES 32,800 32

2010 CCES (Common Content) 55,000 22

2000 NAES 58,373 25

2004 NAES 81,422 23

2008 NAES 61,704 14

2010 CCES module (1,300) 175

CCES Conference: May 29, 2011 2

• We jointly scale over 300,000 citizens with their legislators in order to assess representation

• Our CCES module “bridges” large-N surveys• Project Votesmart “bridges” citizens and

legislators

3CCES Conference: May 29, 2011

4

Dependent Variable: Legislator Ideology(108th-111th Congress’s)

1. Bridging offers a way to get large samples and a reliable joint scaling of preferences

2. Representation of same-party constituents is a spurious effect

3. Democrats tend to position themselves as a quadratic function of the median

4. Republicans respond less to the median, and more to the proportion of Republicans and extreme voters

5

Conclusion

CCES Conference: May 29, 2011

• David Brady• Jonathan Rodden• Simon Jackman• Jeff Lewis• UCLA Social Sciences Computing• Project VoteSmart for sharing NPAT

data• CCES and NAES for sharing survey data• Staff at YouGov/Polimetrix

6

Acknowledgements

CCES Conference: May 29, 2011