I think I'm a pretty smart guy, but every now and then I come across something and say to myself "man, that shit is deep".
This morning, in doing a little bit of remote-term planning for features that we might add to the site in the distant future, I was doing some background research on liberal-conservative scores and other methods of vote classification and stumbled across a website called voteview.com, created by a University of California at San Diego professor named Keith Poole. Voteview uses an extremely rigorous methodology for ordering Senators from most liberal to most conservative which to my mind produces some fairly intuitive results. (Five most liberal senators thus far this year? Russ Feingold, Chris Dodd, Bernie Sanders, Sheldon Whitehose, and Ted Kennedy).
This is how Voteview classifies Senators McCain and Obama over the last four Congresses; for good measure we'll also throw in Senator Clinton:Congress Obama McCain ClintonBy this method, Obama is liberal, but not that liberal. He was the 21st most liberal senator in the 109th Congress and has been the 10th or 11th most liberal thus far in the 110th. The surprising result is John McCain, who rates as the 8th most conservative senator in the 110th Congress, the 2nd most conservative in the 109th, and the 5th or 6th most conservative in the 108th.
107th -- 57/102 22/102
108th -- 96.5/100 21.5/100
109th 21/101 100/101 25/101
110th 10.5/101 94/101 20/101
In the 107th Congress, however, McCain was quite moderate. Voteview doesn't have rankings before the 107th, so I'm not sure whether there was some permanent change in McCain's political philosophy on or around 2003 (perhaps coinciding with the start of the Iraq War) or whether it was his behavior in the 107th that was unusual (perhaps he took some pleasure in being a thorn in President Bush's side after having lost the primary to him). But this is more evidence for the notion that the 2008 version of John McCain is a very different politician than the 2000-2002 version of John McCain.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Liberal-Conservative Rankings Done Right
-- Nate Silver at 7:16 AM
Labels: mccain, meta, political spectrum
52 comments
The main criticism I'd level at it is that it only measures "liberal" in a relative sense within the confines of each separate Congress, I expect even the likes of Sheldon Whitehouse wouldn't come close to European definitions of liberal, say.
@patrick: Woah, wait a sec, now you're not just looking for analysis of American politics, but you want some Davenport Translations across "leagues"? I don't think we're that far along with political statistics. But we can dream, can't we?
I'm also really amused by the attempt to paint Obama as the "most liberal" Senator. Here's the thing: even if you could PROVE that he was "95% liberal," in this election, that's still preferable to having "voted 95% with George W. Bush." The same old name calling just isn't going to work this time, especially with Obama tying McCain to Bush every chance he gets (or that McCain gives him with pointless, dated tactics).
Patrick - you do realize that European definitions of "liberal" mostly put liberal as a category of the center or right, right?
Socialists are on the left in Europe. In some countries, liberals are actually the right wing party; in others, they're somewhere in the middle. American liberals are actually considerably to the left of continental liberals, at least, and probably pretty comparable to British Liberal Democrats.
I think I'm a pretty smart guy, but every now and then I come across something and say to myself "man, that shit is deep".
Which succinctly states my feelings when I first found this site.
Thanks for the link. Good stuff.
I am a conservative, and had a good belly laugh at the classification of McCain as 94/101 conservative.
50-60 is where I would put him. 94 is ludicrous. I'm drowning in that BS.
Another way to look at McCain and Obama is on "party voting." One place to get such information is in the WaPo Congressional Votes database: http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/
Also in any given Congress, the mix of issues that come up for vote may affect whether a particular member votes his or her constituency or on some other basis than "long term" ideology or "long term party loyalty." (Not to mention, the legislative body, or the party in Congress, shifts its center over time, even while individual Congress members may shift less.)
Nate Silver: "I'm not sure whether there was some permanent change in McCain's political philosophy on or around 2003 (perhaps coinciding with the start of the Iraq War) or whether it was his behavior in the 107th that was unusual..."
Another factor may be that McCain was considering a VP run with Kerry (before the idea was scotched after the 2004 primaries). He may have been reaching across the aisle more at the time, in preparation for that possibility.
.
Obama, Clinton,and McCain have been on the trail a lot, and missed many votes. I spot two questions about how that affects their 110th rankings. First, how are the missed votes handled? Second, is there a pattern to which votes they did come back for? I'd guess they came back for high-profile, highly-polarized votes where they had a shot at changing the outcome. That might push them to the ends of the spectrum...
Thunderpig,
You don't appear to be looking at what this study is measuring. It's rating McCain on his recent voting record. He's taken the "Republican position", whatever it may be, more consistently than 93/100 Senators, but less consistently than 6/100 Senators, in the most recent congress.
If you don't think that's meaningful, that's fine, but it's not as if the results are at all biased. Moreover, these results:
- can be used to demonstrate McCain's shift to "maverick" positions in 2001-2004, and his return to a more "faithful" voting pattern after that
- can be used to demonstrate the rise in polarization and partisanship in the last 40 years
So, you can argue that this doesn't say everything about a candidate, and you'd be right, but it is meaningful.
For 110th Congress, Obama's party support score (% of votes in which he voted with the majority of members from his own party) was 96.5%, which is mighty high, though he missed more than 200 votes.
For the same Congress, McCain's party score was 88.3% (then again Mitch McConnell was tops for the "R's" at 91.6%). Though McCain missed more than 300 votes.
Sorry for the serial posting, but should have also pointed out that in 110th Congress, McCain's party voting score was higher than that of Pat Roberts, Kit Bond, Orren Hatch, James Imhofe, and Charles Grassley.
That does not make him a "maverick".
jgabriel,
I think the contemplation of the crossover VP run was more of an effect than a cause of the "maverick" stances. But once he decided he was going to make a run in 2008, he became a faithful Bush Republican again.
I'm willing to believe McCain is more of a moderate on a handful of issues like immigration, and possibly taxes and global warming. He's pulled back towards his party center on those positions of late, and of course he's always been a social conservative and foreign policy hawk.
sporcupine,
Given my quick read of the algorithm, it appears that the approach would simply ignore those candidates in votes where they don't show up.
As far as high profile votes go, it would be nice to weight those more heavily, but it's an awfully subjective thing to try to introduce.
Obama actually missed one of the most high-profile votes of this congress: the question of whether to classify the Iranian Rev. Guard as a terrorist organization. He did state his opposition publicly, but I'm pretty sure he missed the actual official vote. For the record, Clinton voted yes - I'd guess the algorithm classified this as an "error" (no offhand editorializing intended).
Poole produced a set of rankings for the 105th and 106th congress to examine the shifts for Lieberman and McCain. In the 105th, McCain was in the middle of the party; in the 106th, McCain shifted towards the center of the entire spectrum.
http://voteview.com/SEN105107.htm
I'm having a difficult time believing that Ron Paul is the second-most conservative member of the House.
As a result, I'm having a difficult time buying into these rankings.
There's a simple explanation for his more moderate voting record: he was furious at Dubya for what Rove and pals did to him in the SC primary in 2000. he felt betrayed by his own party. then, as his political ego (cindy) saw an opening, he ran as far right as he could to line himself up for this nomination. and now, he's trying to do an about-face toward his pre-2002 positions. the press and obama won't let him get away with it.
John--
American liberals equivalent to Brit Liberal Dems? I find that hard to believe. I think all but perhaps the most left-leaning 1% of Congress would be far more at home with Labour than with the Liberal Dems. The Lib Dems want to establish total equality for gays in marriage and adoption, abolish University tuition, raise the top tax rate to 50%, and allow more cooperation between the UK and Europe and the UN in economics, law enforcement, and military action.
Now, I'll admit, many American liberal politicians may agree with similar proposals in their heart, but they would *never dare* come out and actually propose these things.
djl--
Really? The guy who wants to abolish the Department of Education? You have trouble believing that guy's so conservative?
I wonder about the missed votes too, especially since with other metrics this seems to make the presidential candidates more extreme at the time when the most people are lo