Do legislators' votes reflect constituency preference? A simple way to evaluate the Senate

Robert Higgs

Public Choice, 1989, vol. 63, issue 2, 175-181

Abstract: U.S. senators frequently vote against the preference of their constituency, assuming that such a preference exists. Both of a state's senators represent the same constituency. Whenever they split their votes, one or the other is necessarily going against the constituency preference. For the sample of defense-related votes analyzed above, “misrepresentation” — either observable vote splitting or unobservable vote matches that go against the constituency preference — occurred at least 37 percent of the time, at least 46 percent on one vote. Although party differences accounted for more than two-thirds of the vote splitting, a substantial number of splits remained. Besides, a party difference for a state's senatorial pair is itself problematical. The method employed here can be applied easily to any data whatever on senatorial voting. Its application will show that, quite often, many senators depart from constituency preference. This finding refutes the hypothesis, popular in certain circles, that ours is a more or less “perfect political market” with little or no scope for ideologically driven voting by legislators. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1989

Date: 1989
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DOI: 10.1007/BF00153399

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