My colleague Boris Shor has performed some analysis (jointly with Nolan McCarty) on the ideological positions of state legislators. The estimates are based on state legislative voting, which might make you wonder how you could possibly compare legislators in one state with those in another. The trick is that some state representatives (for example, Barack Obama) also end up in Congress. There are enough of these overlap cases that you can put legislators from all 50 states on a common scale.
Boris and Nolan most recently applied their method to compare Deirdre Scozzofava, a state assemblywoman running on the Republican ticket in special election in New York's 23rd congressoinal district. Boris writes:Scozzafava has been assailed from the right for being far too liberal. For example, the libertarian Wall Street Journal this morning wrote, "Democrats want to portray this race as a familiar moderate-conservative GOP split, but the real issue is why Ms. Scozzafava is a Republican at all. She has voted for so many tax increases that the Democrat is attacking her as a tax raiser. She supported the Obama stimulus, and she favors "card check" to make union organizing easier, or at least she did until a recent flip-flop. . ." The conservative National Review writes: "In spite of its having gone for Obama in 2008, the district's history suggests that it is basically conservative; Ms. Scozzafava is basically not. Boy, is she not. . . ."
Actually, though, Boris and Nolan find Scozzafava to be pretty much in the exact center on a national scale:Her ideological "common space" score is 0.02. These scores, similar but far superior to interest group ratings, put state legislators around the country on the same scale with each other, as well as with members of Congress.
Being in the center nationally puts Scozzafava to the right in New York:Scozzafava's score puts her in the 58th percentile of her party, which makes her slightly more conservative than the average Republican legislator in Albany, so she's a conservative in her [state] party.
Here's Boris's graph showing the estimated positions of Democratic and Republican legislators in all 50 states in the past decade:
The Republican Party appears to be particularly liberal in Massacusetts, Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Oregon, Illinois, and Delaware (although not, as has been much remarked, in California). (The gray lines on the graph show the average ideologies ofcongressional Democrats and Republicans in approximately the same time period.)
10.22.2009
Scozzafava is a Conservative Republican (by New York State standards)
@ 1:28 AM
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67 comments
Correction: Obama was a state senator, not state rep. ;)
Wow... so the California Republican Party is the most conservative in the entire nation! I have some trouble believing this, but if true, its no wonder why they can't get anything done there.
As a Californian, that doesn't surprise me in the least. What's even less surprising is that California has the largest gap between the two parties. The state's been pretty well gerrymandered, and it didn't need that much help, as the borders between the red and blue portions of the state coincide quite well with existing political boundaries.
While we've seen the huge shift in the composition of Congress over the past two elections, the California Congressional delegation (all fifty-odd seats of it) only had one seat switch parties in that time.
To split hairs here, I think to be elected by the entire state (for Governor or US Senator) in California Republicans do have to be more moderate than in many parts of the country, because they are the minority. You can be extremely far right and be likely to win in, say, Orange County, but it'd be much less likely in statewide elections.
And this is why Republicans are losing ground in elections, and Democrats can't get anything done in Congress.
I mean, look at Louisiana, whose average Democratic assemblyman (state legislator, whatever) is to the right of the average Northeastern Republican legislator. Actually, this holds for most of the South.
They're assuming that a Southern-style Republican can win anywhere in the United States. Which - when considering that someone like Jim Inhofe or Tom Coburn would probably be far-right in the NE - is patent bullshit.
Could we possibly get that chart with some sort of ordering to it, like any at all? From smallest to widest gap between the state parties (or between the averages of the state parties even) would be great.
I think a lot of organizations, left and right, will be interested in Boris and Nolan's work. They can bend the curve with a weighting function designed for the votes that matter to them. It would be of great help in analyzing which legislators have actually helped them most in their respective states, and it might be of interest to voters, too.
One caveat might come up. I suspect that, thanks to gerrymandering and the national environment, republicans get more conservative and democrats get more liberal with time in Washington. If legislators' voting behavior changes either with time in Congress, or immediately on going to Congress, using them to anchor the scale between state-legislators might not be simple.
This post is a great example of what is unique to 538 and the main reason I check 538 every day. More more more please.
What a great graph.
Nebraska seems to be missing; any particular reason? I realize they have the only unicameral state legislature, but nothing about being unicameral immediately suggests an inability to plot them on this graph.
What a great presentation of complicated data in a very comprehensible way.
I would be interested in seeing this information clustered by how voting districts are determined. Several people have commented on the extreme partisanship of the California legislature. The conjecture is that this is a result of gerrymandering. Yet my Washington State, which has a very impartial districting process, is one of the only three states (along with CA and UT) where the Democrats are rated extremely liberal and the Republicans extremely conservative.
California has long been known to have one of the most Conservative state Republican parties, that shouldn't be a shock to anyone here. However, to be elected statewide there, the Republicans do have to be a bit more moderate - the state is overall Democratic leaning.
Nebraska not only has a unicameral legislature - but it has a nonpartisan one. So you can't really plot where the Republicans are or where the Democrats are because there aren't any.
I'm interested to know why the confidence intervals are so huge for Marylanders. I guess we haven't had a ton of turnover in Congressional seats, and those that did turnover didn't necessarily come from the state legislature (Van Hollen exempted); is that the reason?
There are two telling comparisons on Boris' chart:
1) Scozzafava is far to the left of the GOP in Congress
2) Congress over the past decade (7 years GOP, 3 years Dem) is to the left of the vast majority of the country.
And this is on an incredibly biased scale where inflicting one of the worst tax and regulatory environments in the country and pledging to strip workers of their right to a secret ballot is considered to be "centrist" (0.02).
This is hardly a recommendation of Scozzafava to actual conservatives and libertarians. One does not move Congress back to the center right were it was in the 90s by electing RINOs.
This also puts the lie to the laughable proposition that the GOP "sprinted to the right over the Bush Administration. The GOP Congress was only slightly less to the left than Vermont!
I've done work analyzing voting patterns in Albany, and this isn't entirely consistent with what I've found. Out of 41 Republican Assemblymembers, she sided with the Democratic position the sixth most frequently (89.54% of the time). She was also one of the Republican legislators to side with the Republican Minority Leader's position the most frequently, but the 2 leaders in 2009 tended to be more liberal than their conference as a whole.
Bart:
Re your slam on EFCA, while I realize you are just parrotting talking points, EFCA would not change any right that any *employee* currently has to a secret ballot. The law has always allowed employers to voluntarily recognize unions without an election. The card-check provision EFCA would merely remove the *employer's* right to choose n election instead of voluntary recognition where there was clear evidence that the union enjoyed majority support.
This kind of quantitative work is very interesting, Andrew; thanks for publicising it. It's unusual that California actually has the most right-wing state party in the nation, because no matter what one may say about partisanship, there's always the South. The paper may not be published yet, but are there any hints from the PCA (or equivalent) as to which issues were most important in drawing up that axis?
Nice useful info.
Of course it's even more useful for those with super-powers, like BdP, who can see into some higher dimension where "on Boris' chart:..
2) Congress over the past decade (7 years GOP, 3 years Dem) is to the left of the vast majority of the country."
It's too bad that exactly none of that information survived the projection onto the mere 2-D space of the published graph accessible to mortals.
Piddlesworth said...
"Could we possibly get that chart with some sort of ordering to it, like any at all? From smallest to widest gap between the state parties (or between the averages of the state parties even) would be great."
I think the ordering is based on the average member of the legislative body from most conservative to most liberal. I can't be sure though. The reason I believe that this maybe correct despite not being obvious is that legislatures have different proportions of Democrats and Republicans. Once the two parties graphs are weighted for proportion this order could be believable.
This would indicate that the US Congress is currently to the left of most state legislatures. I don't like to say that as a liberal; however, that is what the graph would indicate.
@Jeffrey-
I don't think that SC is really all that much more liberal than WI, etc.
As for comparing state legislatures to Congress: did you weight by state population? I don't think so.
jslater said...
Save it for someone with an IQ less than 50.
Secret ballots are the best system we have devised to allow voters to avoid political pressure. Private sector union membership has free fallen under the secret ballot precisely because it prevents union intimidation of workers.
The purpose of stripping employees of their right to a secret ballot is so that groups of union organizers can corner individual workers and "persuade" them to sign a certification card. Back in the 80s, the Teamsters similarly tried to "convince" me to join the union at a UPS station in Florida. SEIU is notorious for these kind of thuggish tactics.
If a large majority of a workforce actually wants to organize, they are just as able to do so by secret ballot as by check card. The only reason you would want card check rather than a secret ballot is to intimidate workers into unionizing.
Michael (mbw) said...
BD: 2) Congress over the past decade (7 years GOP, 3 years Dem) is to the left of the vast majority of the country."
It's too bad that exactly none of that information survived the projection onto the mere 2-D space of the published graph accessible to mortals.
Congress is represented by the acronym "US." You can find them about 2/3 of the way down toward the left just above VT.
@Michael(mbw)-
My assumption could be wrong. However, we are talking about legislatures here not state populations. To determine each state's individual average then the only weighting necessary is the two-party ratio. Once that absolute number is known then two different legislatures can be compared. Weighting by population is probably helpful and useful but is not the point of this exercise and was not what I was discussing.
@BdP- Let me go through this real slow.
Congress is on there, since we can easily look up the weights of the D and R columns to interpolate. State legislatures are on there too, if we go to the substantial trouble to look up the weights of their D and R columns to interpolate. If we then look up the state populations, we can calculate the average representation in state legislatures. At first glance, it looks slightly to the left of congress, but I haven't gone to the substantial trouble to calculate it.
At any rate, absolutely nothing on this plot shows "the vast majority of the country" unfiltered by the same sort of elections, political parties, gerrymandering, etc. which affect Congress.The only comparison which can be made, with some hassle, is to another set of elected officials.
There are data on the views of the people (polls) which show that on most but not all big issues the public is somewhat to the left of Congress. I guess that's largely because:
1. Congress is demonstrably somewhat systematically gerrymandered pro-Republican, partly due to minority-rights laws
2. poor people don't vote as frequently as rich people.
3. Congress is directly reachable by money.
More to the point though: This is not the first time you've just made up data.
@Jeffrey- Sure, your conclusion is probably right, but almost a given. There are a lot of conservative small states. Most of the big states are more liberal.
I'd mitigate the "Congress is to the left of most of the US" with the suggestion that Congress is to the left of most state legislatures.
The states that are more "liberal" than Congress:
CA - 55 EVs
MA - 12 EVs
CT - 8 EVs
NY - 32 EVs
HI - 4 EVs
NJ - 15 EVs
MD - 8 EVs
RI - 4 EVs
ME - 4 EVs
NM - 5 EVs
OR - 7 EVs
VT - 3 EVs
That totals to 154 EVs. Or 130 representatives and 24 senators. California is very extremist, though - the most liberal CA Republican state legislator is to the right of the most conservative NJ legislator, and lonly slightly to the left of the most conservative NE legislators in general.
But things get a bit more interesting when you consider where states fall with regards to liberalness/conservatism. The averages for both caucuses are approximately in the middle.
Then there are weird cases like Wisconsin, where the average Republican is about average for a national Republican, but the Democrats are significantly to the left. However, it's probably easy to infer that Republicans hold a significant majority in WI, since they're ranked as one of the most conservative state legislatures.
Conversely, California and NJ. The average Democratic CA legislator is about as liberal as the most liberal NJ legislator. However, that's hugely counterbalanced by the fact that their most liberal Republican legislator is to the right of our most conservative legislator, and their average puts them to the right of every other state Republican caucus. (In fact, their most conservative legislator is at the same point on the scale as Wyoming's.) CA, however, gets the distinction of "most liberal state legislature" because I believe that Democrats hold the majority in the lower house. (Not sure about the upper house, but I think they might hold there as well.)
I think the reason why Congress looks so "liberal" compared to most states is because of its current composition - at 59% D and 41% R overall, it's probably more Democratic than most states. Invert that, and the US Congress would appear to be one of the most conservative legislatures in the country.
Boris Shor confirms that the ordering is by average ideology of the legislature. This makes it seem odd that WI is so far to the conservative side, since it has a liberal Democratic party and an average Republican party, and the Democrats currently have a majority. Perhaps there's been a big swing to the D's in the past few years, so there are a lot more Republicans when you look over the last decade? They did have a Republican majority when I lived there in 2004.
I'm a little dubious about Utah Democrats coming out so far to the left, though. When I was there, the whole state seemed pretty conservative.
BTW, the research doesn't seem to be based strictly on state legislators who go to Congress (which wouldn't give enough data points for states with small congressional delegations); according to his webpage Shor also uses the Project Votesmart questionnaire as a bridge.
Congress over the past decade (7 years GOP, 3 years Dem) is to the left of the vast majority of the country.
You right wing nutbags really do live in a fantasy world.
More Americans want a public option then the percentage of members of congress. More Americans support equal rights for all citizens then the percentage of members of congress and more Americans want more corporate regulation.
That is just 3 examples, but yeah Bart, the America public is not center-left.
It is also amusing to see that you think you have an IQ north of 50. You really do live in fantasy land.
I should also add in the next three "most liberal" states (below the Congress cutoff):
WA (11 EVs - 9 Reps) - Democratic caucus to the left, Republican caucus to the right about the same magnitude (maybe slightly smaller).
IL (21 EVs - 19 Reps): Democratic caucus slightly to the left, Republican caucus significantly to the left (ranking about as liberal as Oregon's R's).
DE (3 EVs - 1 Rep): Democrats essentially as liberal as national average (slightly more conservative), but Republicans about as liberal as Illinois.
As for VA (which is about middle of the pack and more conservative than Alabama's, Georgia's, Arkansas', or South Carolina's legislatures): Its caucuses are only slightly to the right of average on both counts. However, since I'm guessing its composition is closer to 50/50 or even a small R majority, it falls to the right of those states (which, although they have very conservative Democrats and fairly conservative Republicans, also probably have larger D majorities).
It's even more evident in New Hampshire, which has D's and R's slightly to the left of national average. (D's to a larger degree.) However, since this is New Hampshire, after all, they probably have a LOT of Republicans in their huge state legislature. Which puts them to the left of Missouri (which is relatively conservative for both caucuses) and Louisiana (whose Democrats would be called Republicans in quite a bit of the country).
...and I just remembered: Average over the past 10 years.
However, this may actually still hold - I believe that the largest majority that the Republicans held in the past 10 years were the infamous 109th Do-Nothing, and that was about 55-45, if that. Republicans hadn't held a huge majority - they just legislated like it.
(Actually, didn't control of the Senate flip in the 107th, due to Jeffords bolting from the Republicans and to the Democrats?)
Cool NJ Republicans are the same as North Dakota Democrats.
Any hypotheses on what makes some legislature extremely broad ideologically (e.g. MD, AZ, NH) and others extremely ideologically narrow (e.g. RI, SD, ND, NV)? I would assume gerrymandering is a big part of it, but I don't know enough about the methods in individual states to be sure. There sort of seems to be a large/small state difference too. It would be good to see the 2nd and 3nd quartile values for the set of _all_ legislators in a state vs state size or number of constituents per legislator.
It is quite rich to have a set of far left bloggers asserting that a liberal Republican should be acceptable to the electorate. As if there are objective measurement standards. The chart shows such inconsistencies that such analysis is virtually meaningless.
The bigger picture here is that there is a fight within the Republican party for its voice, and that fight happens after every major defeat, as it does also in the Democratic party. This particular race is a harbinger for nationwide center of gravity, and that's why it must be fought.
The fallacy of the Republican Party moving to the left to attract moderates was again exposed with the nomination of McCain, who was supposed to attract thse moderates. But Democrat-lite is not a winning strategy for Republicans. If voters want liberal, they'll vote for the Democrat.
What is proven to work historically for Republicans is being conservative, which is again regaining favor among the voters, but not so quickly among the party officials. Voters must be given a clear choice.
If, in fact, splitting the party opens the door for Dems to sneak into such seats as the NY one, that would be short-term damaging to the party, but would also hasten resolution of this internal battle. Ultimately, the conservative wing will prevail, primarily because of the obvious flaws of the moderate strategy.
Here's an fascinating report from Louisiana on redistricting. (Ok, fascinating may be too strong a word, but I geek out on this stuff.)
It has a summary of the process used in each state to redraw the lines every decade. Look at Table 1 on page 10.
https://www.policyarchive.org/bitstream/handle/10207/15946/Redistricting2010.pdf?sequence=1
At first glance it doesn't appear that gerrymandering necessarily correlates with extreme partisanship. In the states with the narrowest ideological divisions (RI,HI,LA) two have districts that are drawn by the legislature (RI,LA) while one uses and independent commission. Looking at states with the widest partisan divides (CA,WA,UT) two delegate the redistricting process to independent panels (CA,WA) and one is managed exclusively by the legislature (UT).
If we assume that processes run by legislatures (elected officials) are more prone to gerrymandering than ones run by non-partisan/bi-partisan commissions, this does not appear to explain the extremes of partisanship in state legislatures.
Inferno -- NH has a Democratic majority now, but they had large (I think) R majorities before 2006. New Hampshire Republicans wiped out catastrophically in 2006, in the state lege as well as Congress. So the ten-year average probably tilts R.
Actually, I don't know if the averages include this session; that might explain WI, since I think the Ds just took over in 2008
Smartypants:
Non-partisan independent redistricting a new feature in CA (new enough that i didnt even know that had already been implemented, although theres been talk and its seemed inevitable for the last year)
Before that (which may quite literally have been yesterday) CA redistricting was just like everybody elses
Sigh.
McCain didn't inspire confidence in the base, I'll admit. But for all your wailing about Obama being a far-left liberal, he's no Dennis Kucinich or even a CPCer.
That's the subtlety lost on you. It doesn't have to be "RINOs" or candidates to the right of Rush Limbaugh. That's like supposing that the only choices Democrats have are - again - Kucinich and Ben Nelson. Both of the major candidates this past general cycle in the D primaries were actually somewhat middle-of-the-pack Democrats in terms of beliefs.
I'm not saying to become D-Lite. Shit, that didn't work for the Democrats either when they tried to be R-Lite (see Kerry, John - whose greatest contribution has been the massive amounts of John/John slash written by politically-minded fangirls). However, tax cuts and xenophobia only go so far, man.
Signed: Some libtard that craves an opposition party that isn't just nihilist.
---
Smartypants, Matt - Ah, I see. That was my hunch, and I'll have to take a look at LA districting.
Smartypants,
I think the problem is that both Sate Legislatures and Congress are gerrymandered to varying degrees. Here, the federal legislators are being used to tune the model, on the assumption that state-legislators' partisanship doesn't change systematically when they go to Washington. But it probably does, for a variety of reasons, one of which is likely the difference in gerrymandering between their state-legislative district and their congressional district.
I suspect that, on average, Congressmen are generally more prone to vote with the ideological base of their party than are state representatives. But that's just a gut feeling.
I love this work. If I understand it right, one weak point is that future researchers could address is the assumption that Congresspeople voted as partisanly in the State Houses as they do in Congress. In reality, their behavior is almost certainly more complicated than that.
What is proven to work historically for Republicans is being conservative.
Proven where and when?
Nathan said...
What is proven to work historically for Republicans is being conservative.
Proven where and when?
Reagan, George "Read my Lips" Bush, George "Let's cut taxes and ban partial birth abortion" Bush.
Newt "Contract with America" Gingich.
It also works for Dems...
Bill "Middle Class Tax Cut and End of Big Government" Clinton, Barack "95% of you will get a tax cut and a net spending decrease" Obama.
Then there was the return of the Blue Dogs in 2006 and 2008.
Works like a charm every time it is tried.
Thanks for everybody's comments, compliments and critiques! Here goes an attempt to address people's questions:
1) The states are ordered from most conservative on top to most liberal on the bottom.
2) Nebraska is missing because it's a nonpartisan legislature.
3) California is by far the most polarized legislature in the country, far more so than Congress. Rings true from what I read.
4) Gerrymandering, despite the popular perception, is probably not the cause of most polarization in Congress. There's an article about this in the most recent issue of the American Journal of Political Science (http://bit.ly/2MmVki). We don't yet know about state legislatures, though. But I suspect it's true of them, too.
5) The dotted lines aren't confidence intervals -- this is a boxplot of just the scores themselves, so the lines tell us something about the distribution of scores in the states, but not the error surrounding the scores.
6) Yes, Scozzafava is to the left of most Republicans in Congress. But it is in fact the case that Congressional Republicans have drifted rightward (while Democrats have moved leftward).
7) No particular issues were used - rather all non-uninamous roll call votes in the state legislatures were employed, along with Project Votesmart's NPAT survey. See the paper for more details (http://bshor.wordpress.com/ideology).
8) I have a separate plot in the paper incorporating both parties together which takes into account the numbers between Dems and Reps. No need to interpolate!
9) Yes, it's true that Congress over this time period is to the left of most state legislatures. On the other hand, the state legislatures it's to the right of are very big states (CA, NY, etc.)
10) This is a plot that pools information over a decade or more, so that it's not easily obvious to discuss *current* or any *single* legislative session. But I'll do that for the paper, to the limits of the data (which now goes mostly to 2008).
11) I make no claims that Scozzafava is or is not well suited for her district. I'm a positivist, and I try to see "what is" not "what ought to be." All I'm saying is that she's a moderate-to-conservative Republican ... in New York. The question of whether Albany Republicans are too liberal for their constituencies is an altogether separate question.
Sorry, I didn't sign that last comment. I'm Boris Shor, the author of the blog post that Andy linked to.
Bart:
Your arrogance increases in areas in which you are most ignorant. My point -- which you dodged entirely while engaging in a pointless insult -- was that EFCA would NOT take away any right to a secret ballot that employEES actually have. It only takes away choice for employERS.
Again, employees under CURRENT law have no "right" to an election that EFCA would effect. Employers can ALREADY agree to recognize unions voluntarily, without an election. EFCA would only take away the employER'S choice not to recognize a union.
This is an example of why you make so many enemies on political blogs. It's not your politics: it's that you assert things that are factually demonstrably untrue in a comically arrogant way.
Under EFCA as currently written, if 30% of employees want an election, there's an election.
Under the current system, if an employer doesn't want to recognize a union, they can force an election, at which point:
89% of employers in the private sector force employees to hear anti-union propaganda in mandatory meetings
77% require supervisors to deliver anti-union messages
75% hire consultants to run anti-union campaigns
64% interrogate workers about organizing activity
57% threaten to shut down if a union is formed
34% illegally fire workers for trying to form a union
And in 33% of cases where workers form a union anyway, a contract is not negotiated
Not to mention that in the transportation sector, all non-voters in union elections are legally counted as "no" votes.
So let's stop all of this "secret ballot" BS and call it what it is: anti-union propaganda.
Jacob: Interesting numbers. Can I get a source on where you got them from?
Mr. Shor: Ah, I see (I didn't read the paper, though I probably will sometime). I'm just curious - how'd you figure that Republicans drifted to the right while Democrats drifted to the left? (Well, I guess it's conventional wisdom, but yeah, I'd like to see the numbers.) Is there a plot that shows session by session the ideological makeup of both caucuses?
One more thing:
Mr. Shor
That should be Dr. Shor! Oops. Apologies.
This is what I get for trying to be polite.
Blogger Inferno said...
"Jacob: Interesting numbers. Can I get a source on where you got them from?"
Certainly, they come from a study of labor negotiation cases by Kate Bronfenbrenner at Cornell University. An overview of the project in the Cornell Chronicle is here.
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/May09/Bronfenbrenner.html
More complete analysis is here:
http://docs.google.com/gview?a=v&q=cache:gFbs9uXC-QsJ:www.niu.edu/~rfeurer/labor/Bronfenbrenner%2520edc3b3dc172dd1094f_0ym6ii96d.pdf+kate+bronfenbrenner+cornell+labor+may+2009&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEEShJ_ewgkkzgsry6nVIZQ5bWo69yP-lXFkQnt-2zVEcIV4pNozSILiysxubg-8mHL2UaIW-E_8iwazqTNuyPMrfNG7vaHYv4dpKV9Eaa4RbuGXvD_8iXxlfiZViB6I41z7zDxrBJ&sig=AFQjCNH7oBt5j1vCaSGtq1CYzIzmxhVm8w
And even if EFCA passed and the big bad unions with their tiny staffs of underpaid, overworked organizers (who are rarely allowed at a worksite) convinced 51% of workers at a company to join a union, the management could force an election by strongarming 30% of workers into supporting an election.
And even with a contract, workers in the 39 states with union-busting opt-out laws could elect not to join.
Okay, took a look at it. And...holy crap. One thing I noticed was that moderately aggressive campaigns (that used 5-9 tactics) seemed to be the most effective, and it also seemed as if negative tactics (like firing and transferring workers) were less effective than positive tactics (like improving work conditions).
Also looked at the prelims for Dr. Shor's paper and had a nerdgasm.
jslater said...
Again, employees under CURRENT law have no "right" to an election that EFCA would effect. Employers can ALREADY agree to recognize unions voluntarily, without an election. EFCA would only take away the employER'S choice not to recognize a union.
My friend, unless they are bullied into doing so, no sane business agrees to recognize a union. You are offering a red herring. Private sector unionization did not collapse because businesses were eager to artificially spike their labor costs. Thus, the default situation is a contested union attempt to organize workers.
Under current law, the workers have a right to a secret ballot to vote on a contested union bid to organize to protect the workers from both employer and union retaliation.
This right belongs to the workers as the voters and not to the employer as you misrepresented. The employer has no vote and no power to withhold a secret ballot from the workers. Under the current version of Card Check, if the Union provides cards signed by 50% +1 of the workers, there is no secret ballot election and the union is certified.
30% of the workers cannot demand a secret ballot. Rather, if the union can only "persuade" between 30% and 50% of voters to sign a card, the NLRB will order a secret ballot which is now automatic in a contested union organization bid.
Card check was frequently used to compel organization before the Taft Hartley Act reforms checking thug union organization.
Bart:
You fundamentally misunderstand the law and labor relations. I get paid to teach that subject, and I gave it a shot with you, but you aren't enven trying to engage. Again, there is always a secret ballot before or after EFCA if 30% of the workers want it. Again the status quo is that the employer can choose to recognize voluntarily. But I'm not wasting my time with you anymore.
jslater:
If you are truly a teacher, you need to actually read the legislation about which you are teaching:
EFCA HR 1409 & S 560
SEC. 2. STREAMLINING UNION CERTIFICATION.
(a) In General- Section 9(c) of the National Labor Relations Act (29 U.S.C. 159(c)) is amended by adding at the end the following:
(6) Notwithstanding any other provision of this section, whenever a petition shall have been filed by an employee or group of employees or any individual or labor organization acting in their behalf alleging that a majority of employees in a unit appropriate for the purposes of collective bargaining wish to be represented by an individual or labor organization for such purposes, the Board shall investigate the petition. If the Board finds that a majority of the employees in a unit appropriate for bargaining has signed valid authorizations designating the individual or labor organization specified in the petition as their bargaining representative and that no other individual or labor organization is currently certified or recognized as the exclusive representative of any of the employees in the unit, the Board shall not direct an election but shall certify the individual or labor organization as the representative described in subsection (a).
Under this provision, if 50% +1 of the workers sign a petition, the NLRB is forbidden from holding a secret ballot election and shall certify the union, even if 30% of the rest of the workers demand an election as you hypothesize.
These are the only bills currently before Congress. If you are referring to some news report of a plan to amend these bills, then link to it. Otherwise, stop delivering misinformation here and to your students.
Speaking of Going Rogue, Sarah Palin has just endorsed Tea Party candiate Doug Hoffman against Scozafava.
Bart DePalma said...
Speaking of Going Rogue, Sarah Palin has just endorsed Tea Party candiate Doug Hoffman against Scozafava.
~~~~~~~~~~
NY-23: Palin and Bachmann Agree...Down With the GOP
Indeed!
Boom goes the dynamite....
Oh the humanity!
NY-23: Democrat Leads Way In Special Election
Bill Owens (D) 35
DeDe Scozzafava (R) 30
Doug Hoffman (C) 23
Again, how did the Dems get sooo damn lucky!
:)))
p.s. The last time a Dem won this NY state area was before Lincoln ... FDR, a former NY governor from 1929-1932, couldn't carry this region in his landslide victories of 1932 and 1936. 'nuf said!
Shiloh:
Unlike the liberals who vote like sheep for whoever the Party picks for them, we conservatives are busy taking back the GOP.
If that means running a conservative against a RINO and allowing Owens to take a special election seat for a year, so be it. There is no fundamental difference between Owens and Scozzafava anyway, apart from the party preference.
After we have taken back our party, Hoffman can run against Owens again in the wave election of 2010 and take back the seat.
To this end, I will probably make a contribution to Hoffman.
After we have taken back our party,
Lots of lipservice to "libertarian" ideas but really only for the purpose of a, often very strained (like you on same-sex marriage), rationalization for a hardcore "family values" social agenda.
Taken it back the party??? This is a continuation of the purge that started in the 90's, and has been slowly gnawing at the GOP's neck ever since. Only now with the GOP ranks in a downward spiral it's turned into a feeding frenzy. It's like the Club For Growth going mainstream in the GOP.
You may find this chowdown enjoyable now but the "wave" that this tact reaps in 2010 isn't going to be for you.
Inferno -- in some places Republicans drift right, some places they don't, in some places Democrats drift left, some places they don't. Lots of variation in 50 states over the past 10-15 years.
But overall, the pattern is pretty clear: just as Congress is polarizing by both parties becoming more extreme, most states are doing so as well. The puzzle is WHY. That's an important part of my research.
Dwight:
Conservatives ran the libs out of the GOP over the 80s and then took Congress in 1994 by running conservatives with a conservative message.
The GOP lost Congress after the GOP got corrupt and brought the institution back left between 2001 and 2006 - as shown by the chart above covering the past decade.
Frankly, conservative voters went back to living their lives and took their eyes off their representatives in the late 90s. Once in power, the GOP was then absolutely corrupted and became just another group of liberals.
Time to repeat the house cleaning we did before the 1994 wave election so we can ride the wave again in 2010.
It would be a shame if conservatives did not take advantage of the backlash against the Dems' socialist overreach. Obama has lost more popularity in a shorter time than any President gallup has followed over the past 50 years. The door is wide open if we run conservative candidates. Thus, the need for Hoffman to run against Scozzafava.
@boris
The puzzle is WHY. That's an important part of my research.
I'm curious if you have tried to correlate the rise of the internet (really the WWW) with your research? I don't have any links offhand, but I've heard many different variations of the theory that the internet has a polarizing effect (not just in politics) due to the disjoint and generally anonymous nature of interaction.
Afterall, the world wide web as we know it today came into conception around 15 or so years ago, and you suggested this is probably around the start of this polarization.
@Bart
No need to give me a rundown, again, of the stories you believe. :) Please, continue to enjoy your lunch of GOP brisket.
...om nom nom nom...
Bart DePalma said...
Shiloh:
Unlike the liberals who vote like sheep for whoever the Party picks for them
~~~~~~~~~~
Robert, please, pay no attention passive/aggressive, disingenuously smug BDP once again called all progressives sheep as he does this, not so subtle ad hominem attack daily.
Again, he's just pissed off an African/American family is living in the White House ~ no surprise!
... and so it goes.
and BDP, please continue your up-side down, party of No! rationalizations as they are still somewhat amusing.
hmm, speaking of "sheep", apparently Reps er conservatives like BDP, want all their candidates to walk in lock step like zombies, voting the same way on every issue. Yea, that's what made America great, no rational political discourse among the people. Whereas liberals argue all the time on every issue.
Again ~ Abe, Teddy, Ike are rolling over in their graves ...
I asked this same question on a different thread, but it is more pertinent here:
If nobody wins a majority in the Owens/Scozzafava/Hoffman race, will there be a runoff, or will the plurality winner win the election?
Delorian:
NY has no runoff system for House elections of which I am aware. Whoever takes the plurality of votes wins.
What is interesting about your analysis and the debate about this election is that Republicans on the national level are trying to push a very right wing agenda down to the local level. It will be interesting to watch if the far right-wing ideology will work in all areas of the country, particularly the North-East, California and the NorthWest. Every area in this country has a different definition of what being liberal and being a conservative means. I think it will be pretty hard to drive the views of a few far right-wing national or even southern conservatives down the throats of people in all areas of the country. It just will not work. Seems like a pretty ridiculous small tent strategy to me.
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