Which counties have more registration errors?A little while ago, I wrote that Utah’s voter file has many people with invalid birthdates. Thousands of registered voters were apparently born between 1800 and 1810, for example. Continue reading
Are children and dead people voting in Utah?Update: Just to clarify for some folks who have read the headline without reading to the end of this post: No, I have not found any evidence that dead people or children are voting in Utah. I have only found that there are unusual birthdates recorded for many voters. This post below was just a brief note on an ongoing research project, and it wasn’t meant as a final statement on the quality of Utah’s public data.
Can subtle wordplay boost voter turnout?You might boost turnout by 11-14 percentage points if you urge folks to “be a voter” rather than just “to vote.”
Prior to each election, do-gooders throughout the state remind people to vote. Utah’s lieutenant governor prepares voter information guides, with “Vote!” and “Leave your print!” written in big lettering across the front.
But here’s something interesting: A study that came out a couple days ago suggests that turnout might be much higher if the voter guide said “Be a voter!” instead of “Vote!” This should also interest political activists. If you’re out trying to mobilize voters to show up and support your preferred candidate, you might boost turnout by 11-14 percentage points if you urge folks to “be a voter” rather than just “to vote.”
You can read more here: “Motivating voter turnout by invoking the self.” (The link is to a website that I maintain for a political scientist audience, as opposed to this blog, which has more of a political junkie audience. But this particular study was cool enough that I thought I’d mention it here, too.)
Has Orrin Hatch been left behind by the Republican Party?Since 2001, Hatch has been less conservative than the Senate GOP average.
Sarah Binder, a political scientist and Congressional expert at George Washington University, took a look today at Sen. Orrin Hatch’s voting record. (Her post is on the Monkey Cage, a group political science blog that posts on national issues; you can find it here.) Her two main conclusions:
1. Hatch’s move toward the right didn’t begin in 2010 as a response to Bob Bennett’s ouster; it actually began in 2008. Up through 2007, Bennett was generally more conservative than Hatch. From 2008 on, Hatch was more conservative than Bennett.
2. Senate Republicans have moved FAR to the right over the course of Hatch’s 34 years in office. By comparison, Hatch has moved much less. If Orrin Hatch seems less conservative these days, it’s because the party shifted around him. From 1977 through 1995, Hatch was had a more conservative voting record than average for GOP Senators. For the next 4 years, Hatch was roughly at the Senate GOP average. But since 2001, Hatch has been less conservative than the Senate GOP average.
To quote Binder’s post:
Judging from his broader floor history, Hatch does indeed have a strong conservative record. It’s just that he’s been left behind as the Senate Republican Conference has marched steadily to his right.
In 1962, Ronald Reagan left the Democratic Party and registered as a Republican. He famously said, “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. The party left me.”
There is no question that Orrin Hatch is conservative, and I’m not suggesting he could fit in with the Democratic Party. But if Hatch fails to win renomination next year, he may learn that the Republican Party has left him.
Receive our posts in your email inboxAfter putting it off for some time, I finally added email functionality. If you would like to receive each of our new posts by email, then use the form off to our website’s right-hand side to sign up.
Emails will go out each day between 5 and 7pm. There will be no more than 1 email per day no matter how many items we post. There will not be an email on days when we don’t post anything new.
We tend to post only 5-10 items each month. Given that erratic schedule, I hope that this email feature will make it easier for folks to keep up with what we’re posting.
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Are citizens involved in redistricting?Every single person who has proposed a redistricting map is male.
Utah’s redistricting committee has invited any citizen to create their own redistricting map and publish it at RedistrictUtah.com. The site went live a few weeks ago. The first citizen submissions showed up three weeks ago. So, are people using it?
I asked my dedicated research assistant, Robbie Richards, to look through all the maps that have been posted so far. Here’s what he found.
Of course, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that those 60 citizen contributors are “normal” citizens. It’s probably safe to say that they are politically active. I wouldn’t be surprised if many of them have served as party delegates or as campaign managers. Still, that’s an impressive level of citizen involvement, especially when we consider how time consuming it is to produce a map proposal.
Here’s what’s most surprising, though: Every single person who has proposed a redistricting map is male. I should qualify that. Eight contributors have ambiguous names like Alex, Ellis, Casey, Cory, and Chris. It’s possible that some of these 8 are female. But 61 contributors have unambiguously male names like Dave, Steve, Brian, and Matt. Ladies?
Which legislators run the most bills?Far and away, the most active sponsor of bills in the Utah legislature is Senator Curt Bramble.
A couple weeks ago, I posted information about which legislators skip the most votes. Voting is an important part of a legislator’s job, but it’s certainly not the only part. Much of a legislator’s job occurs behind the scenes. It’s no coincidence that the list of “most absent” legislators included the Speaker of the House (Becky Lockhart), the House budget chair (Mel Brown), the Senate budget chair (Lyle Hillyard), and other legislators with important responsibilities.
Today, let’s look at another duty legislators have: Sponsoring bills. If there is demand for a policy change, it will not happen unless some legislator steps up to write the bill and sponsor it through the legislative process. There is wide variation in bill sponsorship activity.
Far and away, the most active sponsor of bills in the Utah legislature is Senator Curt Bramble. In 2011, he sponsored (excluding “floor sponsored”) 34 bills, 23 of which passed. No other legislator came close. In part, he is so busy because other legislators sometimes look to him to create compromise bills in difficult policy areas.
There’s a big gap between Sen. Bramble and other legislators. The table below shows the 5 legislators who introduced the most bills in 2011 (regardless of how many of their bills passed).
| Legislator | # introduced | # passed |
| Sen. Curt Bramble | 34 | 23 |
| Rep. Chris Herrod | 22 | 3 |
| Sen. Stuart Adams | 19 | 16 |
| Sen. Steve Urquhart | 19 | 12 |
| Sen. Ben McAdams | 19 | 11 |
Looking at things from a different angle, the table below lists the legislators who passed the most bills (regardless of how many they introduced).
| Legislator | # introduced | # passed |
| Sen. Curt Bramble | 34 | 25 |
| Sen. Stuart Adams | 19 | 16 |
| Sen. Lyle Hillyard | 17 | 16 |
| Sen. Steve Urquhart | 19 | 12 |
| Sen. John Valentine | 14 | 12 |
Looking at the tables above, it seems that the most active bill sponsors tend to be current and former members of leadership, with a few others thrown in. Not surprisingly, the least active bill sponsors tend to be freshmen legislators who are still getting the hang of things.
There is one notable exception: The Speaker, Becky Lockhart. It’s common for Speakers (both in Utah and in Congress) to refrain from sponsoring bills. Likewise, Senate President Michael Waddoups sponsored only one bill (which passed).
Aside from Speaker Lockhart, there were eleven legislators who did not pass a single bill: Representatives Biskupski, Briscoe, Butterfield, Fisher, Moss, Nielson, Richardson, Romero, Sagers, Sanpei, and Wheatley. All but Rep. Sanpei introduced a bill, but none had a bill pass.
You can find data for every legislator by clicking here.
Honestly, it probably doesn’t matter that much. Still, data guys like me find this interesting.
What these statistics show is that there are many ways that legislators participate in the legislative session. Utah’s constitution forces the legislature to complete all its work in only 7 weeks each year. Some legislators sponsor few bills and hold no leadership positions, enabling them to attend every vote without much difficulty. Other legislators sponsor many bills or hold important leadership positions, forcing them to leave the floor sometimes in order to fulfill their other duties.
Consider this: The 5 legislators with the best attendance record in floor votes sponsored a combined 18 bills, 8 of which passed. That’s an average of 3.6 bills introduced per legislator, with 1.6 passing. By contrast, Sen. Bramble singlehandedly introduced almost twice as many bills (34), passing almost three times as many (23). Perhaps it’s not surprising that he had the fifth-worst attendance in floor votes, following a Senator with health issues (Sen. Buttars) and three with important leadership and budget duties (Speaker Lockhart, Rep. Mel Brown, Sen. Hillyard).
(Updated Jan 9, 2012 with some minor corrections to the number of bills passed by each legislator. When I say a bill “passed,” I mean it was enrolled. That is, it passed both chambers. Whether the governor signed or vetoed the bill is a separate matter that I don’t consider here.)
Which legislators run the most bills?
Do we live in a “compound Constitutional Republic” or something else?There are no uses of the phrase “compound constitutional republic” in any American English book from 1800 through 2000.
Last March, the Utah legislature passed a bill (HB 220) requiring Utah’s public schools to teach that the United States is a “compound Constitutional republic.” This past week, the Tribune ran two dueling op-eds about this bill.
The first, by Payson High School psychology teacher David Rockwood, makes a strong claim: “The term constitutional compound republic, as in HB 220, is a garbage term that does not exist in the academic discourse on government.” The reply, by Utah Representative Ken Ivory, defends the bill by quoting several founders who characterized our country as a “republic.” (Ivory says little about the specific term “compound Constitutional republic.”)
I can’t say anything that will resolve this dispute to everybody’s satisfaction. Let’s face it: For some, this is just a matter of partisan cheerleading. Some (not all) Republicans want to call this a republic just because that sounds like “Republican,” and some (not all) Democrats want to call this a democracy just because that sounds like “Democrat.” Alas. But let’s see if we can look at any data that shed light on this dispute.
First, let’s look at whether the term “compound Constitutional Republic” existed before HB 220. This is a factual question that is easy to test. The answer: No. The legislature pretty much made this one up.
I recall Googling this term back in February when folks were first discussing this bill. I found fewer than 60 hits at the time, and all of them were to websites that were talking about this bill. Now that people have been talking about this bill for several months, there are over 2000 hits, and I’m not going to take the time to sift through all of them. But if you run a “timeline” search in Google, the results are telling. Here’s a screenshot (below, click to enlarge) of a timeline search I ran today. The bargraph at the top is the most important part. It shows no hits for this term between January 2010 and February 2011. Suddenly, there are a ton of hits in March 2011, with a few new results in subsequent months. (The graph shows new websites using the term each month, not the total number of sites using the term in any given month, hence the decline after March.)
Google search results (click to enlarge)
It’s true that James Madison used the term “compound Republic” once in Federalist 51, as Rep. Ivory notes. Madison also used the term “compound Republic” once in Federalist 62. However, it seems that Madison used this term for rhetorical purposes, not to give a name to our Constitutional structure. Likewise, the Federalist papers occasionally put other qualifiers in front of “republic,” such as “extended republic” (Federalist 14), “confederate republic” (Federalist 9), “commercial republic” (Federalist 6), “representative republic” (Federalist 48 and 83), and so on.
The fact that Madison used the term “compound republic” twice does not mean that the official name for our political system is “compound constitutional republic.” By that logic, perhaps HB 220 should have required schools to teach that we live in a “confederate republic” or a “representative republic.” Or maybe we live in an “extended compound confederate commercial representative republic.”
Regardless of whether the term “compound Constitutional republic” is an accurate description of our political system, let’s at least acknowledge that it is not a term that was used historically.
Of course, the real question underlying this whole debate is whether we live in a republic or a democracy. In Federalist 14, James Madison takes great lengths to argue that “democracy” refers to a system where the people themselves make every policy decision, whereas “republic” refers to a system where representatives make the decisions on behalf of the people.
These days, we would usually use the term “direct democracy” to mean what Madison meant by “democracy,” and we would use the term “representative democracy” to mean what Madison meant by “republic.” There’s a reason we don’t just say “republic” much–it’s vague. By itself, the term “republic” doesn’t tell us much about where the representatives come from. Are they elected through a democratic process (like the U.S. House), elected through an indirect process (like the original electoral college), or appointed through some other process (like the Supreme Court)?
Hence, the terms “representative democracy” and “democratic republic” are often used to characterize our political system rather than the somewhat vague “republic.” If HB 220 had mandated the use of one of these terms, I doubt it would have attracted any criticism.
To see what Americans call our system of government, take a look at the Google Ngram below (click to enlarge). To produce an Ngram, Google searches through thousands of books for each search term, then it sorts the results by each book’s publication date. These charts give a sense for how often Americans have used certain terms over time. The blue and red lines show usage of the terms “representative democracy” and “democratic republic” respectively. It’s clear that these two terms are widely used. The green line shows that “constitutional republic” also receives regular usage, albeit much less often. The yellow line tracks the term “compound republic,” picking up a few hits over the years. The teal line tracks the Utah legislature’s preferred term, “compound constitutional republic.” You’ll note that it’s completely flat. There are no uses of the phrase “compound constitutional republic” in any American English book from 1800 through 2000. You can tweak the NGram by clicking here if you want.
Google Ngram (click to enlarge)
Now, let’s zoom in on books published in the first 20 years after the Constitutional convention. The ngram below (click to enlarge) is identical to the one above, except I’ve restricted the date range to 1787 through 1807. “Democratic republic” was the favored term during this period, followed by “representative democracy.” There were a few references to “constitutional republic,” with fewer still to “compound republic.” There were no references at all to “compound constitutional republic.”
Google Ngram (click to enlarge)
It’s clear that “compound constitutional republic” is not a historical term. The simpler term “compound republic” was used occasionally during the founding period, but not nearly as often as “representative democracy” and “democratic republic,” two terms that are still in wide use today.
It’s not clear to me that Utah’s legislators are correcting anything by mandating use of a confusing neologism, “compound constitutional republic.” America’s founding generation used other terms to refer to our new political system.
And even if this were a term that the founders used regularly, language evolves. Up until around a couple hundred years ago, “wherefore” was widely used to mean “why.” Juliet wondered aloud, “Wherefore art thou Romeo?” She wasn’t asking where Romeo was. She was wondering why he had to be named “Romeo Montague” as opposed to “Romeo Somethingelse.” It would be silly for the legislature to mandate that all public school teachers stop using the word “why” and start using the word “wherefore” exclusively. Yes, they would be correct that people once spoke that way. But our language has evolved, and we don’t speak that way anymore.
So even if it is true that we once called our country a republic, that doesn’t mean we need to require our teachers to use an older term. Other widely used terms, like “representative democracy” and “democratic republic,” were widely used during the founding period and continue to be used today.
How might changes in Tea Party support affect a Chaffetz-Hatch-Matheson race?The Tea Party movement in Utah is becoming more and more of a Republican phenomenon.
The Tea Party movement continues to make its voice heard around the country and in Utah. Earlier this week, tea party activists protested at the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s Washington D.C. headquarters because of the organization’s support of Senator Orrin Hatch’s reelection campaign. With Representative Jason Chaffetz increasingly leaning toward challenging Hatch in 2012, Senator Bennett’s ouster at the hands of Republican delegates is no doubt on the minds of both Hatch and Chaffetz. A May 2010 survey of Republican convention delegates conducted by BYU’s Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy (CSED) found that 86% of delegates held a favorable view of the Tea Party movement and 43% considered themselves to be “active supporters” of the Tea Party.
But does Hatch have reason to worry? We don’t have any new data on the delegates selected in 2010 and a new crop will be selected in early 2012 anyway. What we do have are data about the change in Utah voters’ attitudes toward the Tea Party from November 2010 to April 2011. The November data come from the Utah Colleges Exit Poll and the April 2011 data come from the Utah Voter Poll.
In both surveys voters were asked whether they “have a favorable or unfavorable impression of the political movement known as the Tea Party.” They were also asked: “Do you consider yourself to be an active supporter of the Tea Party movement, or not?”
Overall there is relative stability in these questions about the Tea Party. In November, 53% of voters held a favorable impression of the Tea Party. Five months later that figure dropped slightly to 46%. Over the same period, the proportion of Utah voters who consider themselves active supporters of the Tea Party slipped from 22% to 20%.
Tea Party favorability among all Utahns
However, the overall stability conceals some very dramatic changes when the numbers are broken down by party identification. The Tea Party declined in favorability among all Utah voters except among self-identified “strong Republicans.” In November, the Tea Party was even viewed favorably by a small proportion of Democrats. By April, virtually no Democrats expressed a favorable view. However, the most dramatic change is among Independents. Almost half of independents viewed the Tea Party favorably in November, but the same was true of only about 1 in 4 by April. Tea Party favorability also declined among “independent leaning Republicans” and “not so strong Republicans” but increased among “strong Republicans.” The same essential trend holds true for the question gauging “active support” for the Tea Party movement.
So while the overall favorability and active support stay relatively even over time, the small increase in Tea Party support among the numerous “strong Republicans” conceals some of the very meaningful change among other partisan groups.
Tea Party favorability in Utah, by partisanship
Tea Party support in Utah, by partisanship
What are the implications of these trends? First, it appears that the Tea Party movement in Utah is becoming more and more of a Republican phenomenon. It may be true that those voters with weaker attachments to the Republican Party are less enchanted with the Tea Party. It may also be true that those with strong attachments to the Tea Party have become more enamored with the Republican Party. With more data over time, we’ll be able to see if the association between the Tea Party and the Republican Party is strengthening or not.
The news for Hatch and Chaffetz is mixed. The strength of the Tea Party appears to be holding among the strongest Republicans (this group is much more likely to serve as delegates). The danger for both Hatch and Chaffetz is that in appealing to the very conservative Tea Party delegates, they may alienate Republicans with weaker partisan attachments that will be very important to withstanding a general election challenge from a popular Democrat like Jim Matheson who has historically counted moderate Republicans as an essential component of a winning coalition.
Update: I have had a few requests for sample sizes for the survey questions. Here they are:
Tea Party favorability question:
November 2010 Utah Colleges Exit Poll, n=1956
April 2011 Utah Voter Poll, n=609
Tea Party active support question:
November 2010 Utah Colleges Exit Poll, n=1917
April 2011 Utah Voter Poll, n=606
Full topline results for the April 2011 Utah Voter Poll have now been posted here.
Matt Frei, an undergraduate political science major and research fellow with the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy, contributed both analysis and writing to this blog post.
How might changes in Tea Party support affect a Chaffetz-Hatch-Matheson race?
Why do legislators skip votes?Legislative leaders skip way more votes than non-leaders.
Let’s continue this study of absenteeism in the Utah legislature. Earlier, I showed that Utah legislators skip lots of votes. Then, I showed that legislators miss some types of votes more than others. Next, I gave a list of which legislators have the worst attendance records. Now, let’s wrap this up by comparing legislators who miss lots of votes to legislators who miss few votes. Are there predictable patterns?
There’s an easy way and a hard way to study this. The easy way is easy to understand, even if you don’t know statistics, but it might give inaccurate results. The hard way is harder to understand, but it gives better results. Let’s look at the easy way first.
I’ve calculated how often each legislator missed votes. (Raw data are here.) These are percents: During the 2011 session, what percent of the time was each legislator absent instead of voting yes or no? In this analysis, I’m looking only at absenteeism in the Utah House.
In the table below, I compare average absentee rates for various groups. For example, there are 8 leaders in the Utah House. Four are Republicans and four are Democrats. Overall, leaders miss 12.6% of their votes, but nonleaders miss only 6.4% of their votes. Here’s the complete table:
| Group 1 | Group 2 | Difference | ||
| Nonleaders | 6.4% | Leaders | 12.6% | +6.2% |
| Democrats | 5.0% | Republicans | 7.7% | +2.8% |
| Low floor power | 5.7% | High floor power | 7.7% | +2.0% |
| Rookie | 4.1% | Old timer | 11.4% | +7.3% |
| Sponsor few bills | 6.7% | Sponsor many bills | 9.0% | +2.3% |
In each row of the table, the difference is boldfaced if it is outside the margin of error and italicized if it is not.1 But remember, this “easy” analysis has some flaws that I’ll address in a moment.
The difference between Republicans and Democrats is interesting, but it’s not large enough to be meaningful. The same is true of any other difference in italics.
Seniority seems to play a role. Rookies are those who have served 0, 1, or 2 previous sessions, placing them in the lowest quartile. Old timers have served at least 8 previous sessions, placing them in the highest quartile. Old timers have a much higher absentee rate than rookies.
You might think you would miss more votes if you were sponsoring many bills. After all, you may need to leave the chamber to push your bill through the other one, or to meet with people about your bill, and so on. It turns out the difference between those who sponsor lots of bills (8 or more, the upper quartile) and few bills (3 or fewer, the bottom quartile) is within the margin of error, though. (I’m not counting floor sponsored or co-sponsored bills here.)
So, this table shows that leaders and old timers miss more votes. It may also be that Republicans and legislators who sponsor many bills also miss more votes, but those estimates are within the margin of error.
Okay. That’s the easy way to do the analysis. Here’s the problem with it: Many of those variables move together. Do old timers miss more votes because they are old timers, or is it that old timers are also more likely to be (a) leaders and (b) the sponsors of many, many bils? The effect of being an old timer might actually be driven by something else. So let’s move to the “hard” analysis.
The “hard” way to do this analysis involves some statistical techniques that I won’t explain here. These techniques can help us isolate the effect of each of the variables listed above, other things being equal. That “other things being equal” bit is key. We can estimate the effect of gaining an additional year of experience, for example, while holding constant other things like your leadership status, how many bills you’re sponsoring, your party, and so on.
When I use these techniques, I find that the effect of seniority mostly goes away. It appears to get swallowed up by the effect of being a leader, which has a massive effect.
I also find that the number of bills you sponsor continues to have no effect on your absentee rate. Strangely, however, I find that if you increase the number of bills you “floor sponsor,” your absentee rate goes down. (It’s called “floor sponsoring” if a Senator approaches a Representative and asks him to sponsor his bill through the House. The Senator is the main sponsor, and he already guided the bill through the Senate; the Representative is the floor sponsor, and his only job is to get it through the House, with the main sponsor’s help.)
It’s a bit counterintuitive that additional floor sponsorship would cause you to miss fewer votes. I would expect the opposite. The more bills you’re shepherding, the more you might need to leave the floor to build your coalition. I’m still puzzling through this.
I’m still collecting some additional variables that I haven’t mentioned here, and if I have any additional findings that seem interesting I’ll post them later. In the meantime, the clearest finding is this: Legislative leaders skip way more votes than non-leaders.
Update: See “Which legislators run the most bills?” for further discussion of how bill sponsorship activity might hurt attendance.
Why do legislators skip votes?
