Social science: It works

Posted on March 7, 2011 by Adam Brown

Data-based analysis can contribute in meaningful ways to Utah’s political dialogue.

Last Friday, March 4, the Senate passed HB 497, Rep. Stephen Sandstrom’s illegal immigration enforcement bill, by a vote of 22-5 with 2 absent. The bill was almost identical to HB 70, the “Arizona-style” bill, but the Senate required Sandstrom to renumber the bill in hopes that it would shed its “Arizona” stigma.

HB 70 had passed the Utah House two weeks earlier. When it did, I wrote a post here predicting the vote on HB 70 (now HB 497) in the Senate. After posting those predictions, I heard from a few people that I was wrong, and that Senator X or Senator Y would not be voting as I predicted. (Actually, I was told by various people that several of my predictions were wrong.) Continue reading →

About Adam Brown: Adam Brown is an associate professor of political science at Brigham Young University and a research fellow with the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy. You can learn more about him at his website.

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Was HB 410 a bipartisan battle between moderates and ideologues?

Posted on March 1, 2011 by Adam Brown

It’s extremely unusual that the legislators in the center would team up to vote against the legislators at the extremes.

Something weird happened today in the Utah legislature. The Utah House of Representatives voted on Becky Edwards’s HB 410, but the voting pattern was weird. It appears that HB 410 triggered an unusual bipartisan alliance of the most liberal and most conservative legislators against an alliance of moderates.

Normally, we would expect liberals to vote one way and conservatives to vote the other way. I’ve written before about the ideology scores that I’ve calculated for each legislator on a score of 0 (extremely liberal) to 100 (extremely conservative). When the House voted on HB 70, Rep. Sandstrom’s illegal immigration enforcement bill, it was a clean ideological vote. Most of those voting “no” had an ideology score below 40 or so, while most voting “yes” had a score above 50 or so. That’s the normal pattern–the pattern we did not see on HB 410 today.

You can see that normal pattern clearly in the chart below, which looks at Sandstrom’s HB 70. The red curve shows the average ideology of those who voted for HB 70. You can see that the red curve ranges from just below 40 to just below 90, indicating the range of legislators who voted for this, and the curve is highest around 80, indicating that most legislators who voted for HB 70 had an ideology in this range.

HB 70 by ideology

HB 70 by ideology

Now, that’s a typical voting pattern. There’s little overlap in the two curves, and one curve is clearly to the left of the other.

Compare that to the voting pattern that we saw today when the Utah House voted on Rep. Edwards’s HB 410 (see chart below). Most of those who opposed the bill (blue line) were either very liberal or very conservative; note that the blue curve has two humps, indicating that there were two distinct groups who opposed this bill, one on each extreme. By contrast, most of those who supported this bill were clustered between 60 and 70. The overall average ideology score in the Utah House is between 65 (the median) and 68 (the mean), suggesting that the supporters were mostly moderates.

HB 410 by ideology

HB 410 by ideology

That’s a weird graph. It’s extremely unusual that the legislators in the center would team up to vote against the legislators at the extremes. The pattern wasn’t perfect, of course. There were moderates who voted “no,” and there were not-so-moderates who voted “yes.” But the overall picture that emerges is one of center versus extremes. And that’s not the typical pattern is legislative politics.

Currently, when you register to vote, your name, address, party affiliation, and birthdate all become a public part of the voter file. Anybody can get a copy of the file. HB 410 would have made your birth day and month private, leaving only the year as a public part of the file. The Republican Party and the Democratic Party both opposed this bill, fearing that it would undermine their campaign efforts if they had less information in the voter file. The bill failed, 30 “yes” to 42 “no” votes.

I’m not sure what produced the weird pattern on this graph. It appears the more ideological voters are more willing to be swayed by the state party organizations, but there could be something else at play.

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Will Sandstrom’s immigration bill pass the Senate?

Posted on February 22, 2011 by Adam Brown

If the Senate votes on HB 70 without any amendments, I predict that it will pass easily

On Friday, the Utah House passed H.B. 70, Rep. Stephen Sandstrom’s illegal immigration enforcement bill. Now it goes to the Senate. If the Senate votes on HB 70 without any amendments, I predict that it will pass easily with between 19 and 23 “aye” votes and between 0 and 8 “nay” votes. If I had to be more precise, I would predict 20 “aye” and 5 “nay” votes. That adds up to 25 votes total. I have no prediction for the remaining 4 votes.

I base these predictions on ideology scores that I have calculated for each legislator. In brief, I calculated a score between 0 and 100 for each legislator based on their voting record in the 2010 legislative session. An extreme liberal would score 0; an extreme conservative would score 100. In practice, scores range between 25.3 and 88.7. I have discussed these ideology scores in previous posts (e.g. here and here). See those posts for more explanation about these ideology scores. Note that I only have scores for legislators who served in 2010, so I ignore freshmen in this analysis.

In Friday’s House vote, every Representative with an ideology score above 53 voted for H.B. 70. Every Representative with a score below 38 voted against it. Of those with a score between 38 and 53, 3 voted “nay” while 1 voted “aye.”

Based on this pattern, I predict that any Senator with a score below 38 will vote against HB 70 and any Senator with a score above 53 will vote for it, assuming no amendments. I have no prediction for Senators between these scores.

Here are my 5 predicted “nay” votes, with 2010 ideology scores in parentheses: Romero (27.2), McAdams (35.0), Robles (38.5), Davis (40.2), Mayne (46.2). I sorted those “nay” votes from most to least liberal. That means I’m most certain about Romero’s vote and least certain about Mayne’s.

Here are my 20 predicted “aye” votes: Dayton (88.7), H. Stephenson (88.7), Madsen (86.0), Waddoups (85.3), Buttars (84.8), Jenkins (82.2), Knudson (81.5), Adams (80.2), Stowell (79.7), Valentine (79.5), Niederhauser (78.8), Hillyard (78.7), Okerlund (78.7), Hinkins (77.5), Christensen (77.5), Urquhart (76.7), J. Stevenson (76.3), Bramble (75.3), Liljenquist (74.7), Van Tassell (70.2). I sorted those from most to least conservative, so I’m most certain about Dayton’s vote and least certain about Van Tassell’s.

There are four votes that I can’t call. For two votes, that’s because their ideology scores lie between 38 and 53: Jones (52.5) and Morgan (50.5). For the other two, that’s because they are freshmen: Thatcher and Reid.

This analysis is obviously imperfect. Consider two caveats.

First, my ideology scores are based on voting over many, many bills, most of which have nothing to do with immigration. It’s possible that a legislator could be more conservative on taxes and the environment than on immigration, which would make my predictions incorrect. In particular, I see that this analysis predicts that Senator Bramble would vote for HB 70–yet he has made clear that he prefers a more comprehensive approach to reform.

Second, it’s also likely that the Senate will amend HB 70 before voting on it. These predictions assume that the Senate votes on the exact same bill as the House. Given how many amendments were attempted on HB 70 while it was in the House, it seems nearly certain that the Senate will amend it.

Still, it’s telling that the ideological cutpoint on H.B. 70 appears to lie somewhere between Rep. Duckworth (most liberal “aye”) and Rep. Janice Fisher (most conservative “nay”). Both are Democrats.

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Do we live in a democracy or a republic?

Posted on February 15, 2011 by Adam Brown

Maybe it’s not a coincidence that we began referring to ourselves as a “democracy” more frequently at the same time that our country became more (directly) democratic.

Do we live in a democracy or a republic? Let’s ask Google. I used Google’s ngram viewer to search TONS of books written since 1780. It turns out that the word “republic” was far more common than “democracy” up until around 1900 in American English. There was a rapid shift between about 1900 and 1920 as “democracy” came into vogue, displacing “republic.” This shift peaked around 1940. Here’s the chart from Google (click to enlarge):

Democracy or republic? An n-gram

Democracy or republic? An n-gram

Why would there have been such a shift in usage in the early 1900s? I have a guess. Initiatives, recalls, and referendums are collectively known as “direct democracy.” Just about every state that adopted some form of direct democracy did so between 1898 and 1918. In fact, Utah was among the first to adopt direct democracy institutions. We have both an initiative (e.g. failed ethics reform initiative) and a referendum process (e.g. vouchers overturned) here but no recall.

Maybe it’s not a coincidence that we began referring to ourselves as a “democracy” more frequently at the same time that our country became more (directly) democratic.

Coincidentally, references to our second and third presidents seem to follow the same pattern. Maybe that’s not a coincidence either. Here’s the chart (click to enlarge):

Jefferson vs Adams ngram

Jefferson vs Adams ngram

Makes me wonder if we’ll see a movement to build a “John Adams” monument in Washington DC that’s as beautiful and prominent as the Jefferson Memorial.

Update (7/11/2011): See a far more thorough treatment of this topic in “Do we live in a compound constitutional republic?“

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How educated are Utah’s legislators?

Posted on February 15, 2011 by Adam Brown

How do Utah’s two chambers rank in terms of legislators’ education? The Utah Senate is above average. The Utah House is well below average.

There are 99 state legislative bodies in the United States. That is, there are 49 states with a bicameral (two-chamber) legislature, like Utah, and one state (Nebraska) with a unicameral legislature. That adds up to 99 legislative chambers.

Of those 99 chambers, how do Utah’s two chambers rank in terms of legislators’ education? The Utah Senate is above average. The Utah House is well below average.

If we rank the 99 chambers by the percentage of legislators that earned some degree after high school–whether a law degree or a technical certificate–then Utah’s House ranks #90 out of 99. That’s because 23% of Utah’s Representatives did not earn anything after high school. Another 1% have an AA or certificate, 31% have a BA, 32% have an MA, 4% have a JD, and 7% have a doctoral degree of some sort.

Meanwhile, the Utah Senate ranks #17 out of 99. Only 7% of Utah’s Senators (that’s 2 Senators) stopped at high school. Another 7% have an AA or certificate, 24% have a BA, 28% have an MA, 28% have a JD, and 7% have a doctoral degree of some sort.

I collected these data in September 2009. There’s been some turnover in both chambers since then, so the precise numbers may have changed a bit. If I have time later (alas), I’d be curious to see whether each legislator’s educational level correlates with his or her votes on funding for higher education. I’m not sure up front that it will. Some of the legislature’s more outspoken critics of our public/higher education do have respectable degrees, after all.

I’m certainly no educational elitist. I don’t think that every legislator needs a graduate degree to legislative effectively. In fact, it’s probably good for Utah that the two chambers differ so much in terms of educational attainment. That difference broadens the legislature’s perspective.

If you want to see the raw data that this post is based on, click here. You’ll want to click “H.S.” at the top of the table to sort the chambers by the percent of legislators that stopped at high school.

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Why do county parties have platforms?

Posted on January 21, 2011 by Adam Brown

Recently I wanted to dig up all the county-level Republican and Democratic platforms here in Utah. My interest came from the pro-life plank in the surprisingly conservative Utah County Democratic platform–I wanted to see how many other county platforms in Utah said something that conflicted with the national party platforms.

Counties with Party Platforms

Counties with Party Platforms (click to enlarge)

I was surprised to find that hardly any county parties in Utah have platforms. In fact, county platforms don’t even exist outside the greater Wasatch Front, unless I overlooked something. Take a look at the map at right. Counties in purple (Cache, Davis, Salt Lake, and Utah) have county-level platforms for both parties. Counties in red (Box Elder) have a county Republican platform. Counties in blue (Weber, Wasatch) have a county Democratic platform.

I would guess that a big reason so many county parties lack a platform is population. Not the county’s total population, but the population of Republicans or Democrats. If you don’t have at least several hundred Democrats in a county, you probably don’t have a very deep talent pool from which to recruit an active county Democratic chair who might bother to put together a platform committee prior to the county convention.

In the table below, I have listed the 12 counties with the most Democrats (number of Dems, not percent of Dems) and also the 12 counties with the most Republicans, always in descending order.1

Largest Democratic populations Has Democratic platform? Largest Republican populations Has Republican platform?
1 Salt Lake Yes 1 Salt Lake Yes
2 Davis Yes 2 Utah Yes
3 Utah Yes 3 Davis Yes
4 Weber Yes 4 Weber No
5 Washington No 5 Washington No
6 Summit No 6 Cache Yes
7 Cache Yes 7 Box Elder Yes
8 Tooele No 8 Iron No
9 Box Elder No 9 Tooele No
10 Carbon No 10 Uintah No
11 Iron No 11 Summit No
12 Wasatch Yes 12 Sevier No
17 more counties No 17 more counties No

Looks like population is the main driver of platform adoption. Still, consider some weirdness:

  • Why don’t we see platforms in Washington County? They’re big enough. Same with Summit Democrats and Weber Republicans.
  • Why does Wasatch County have a Democratic platform? They have about 1/10 as many Democratic voters as most of the other counties with Democratic platforms.

I should mention that I searched the state and county party websites for platforms. It’s possible that some counties have a platform but don’t post it online. If you know of a platform that I missed, please send it along.

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Is Rep. Dougall the same (ideologically) as Rep. Frank?

Posted on January 14, 2011 by Adam Brown

Utah news has been aflutter for the past week about an error made by the Utah County Clerk’s office that results in Rep. Craig Frank losing his seat. Seems that a couple thousand Utahns–including Frank–who thought they lived in Frank’s district actually live in Rep. John Dougall’s district. So now those voters–who voted for Frank in the 2010 elections–will be represented by Dougall, who they didn’t have an opportunity to vote for or against.

Here’s a question. Does it matter? Can those voters expect the same sorts of policy choices from Dougall that they could have had from Frank? Let’s turn to the numbers.

Each year, several interest groups rate Utah’s legislators on their votes. By averaging across these ratings, we can assign each legislator a score from 0 (solidly liberal) to 100 (solidly conservative). In practice, nobody ever scores a perfect 0 or a perfect 100. But it looks like Frank is a fair amount more conservative than Dougall. Here it is:

Ideology scores: Frank vs Dougall (2010)

Ideology scores: Frank vs Dougall (2010)

You see that the typical Democratic legislator has a score between 30 and 40, and the typical Republican legislator has a score between 70 and 80. Dougall’s score was 73, placing him left of ousted speaker David Clark (74.8), new speaker Becky Lockhart (80.8), and especially Craig Frank (84.7). So based on these scores from 2010, Dougall is quite a bit more moderate than Craig Frank. Frank is clearly in the Republican party’s conservative wing; Dougall is in the party’s more moderate wing.

Even if we reach back to data from 2008, we see the same general pattern. Here’s the same figure, but using older data:

Ideology scores: Frank vs Dougall (2008)

Ideology scores: Frank vs Dougall (2008)

In 2008, the gap between Dougall and Frank wasn’t as big as in 2010. Both Dougall and Frank were in the Republican party’s conservative wing in 2008. Still, there was a bit of a gap.

My point isn’t that Dougall’s views are better than Frank’s, or that Frank’s are better than Dougall’s. My point is that this mistake by the Utah County Clerk may have meaningful differences for a few thousand voters residents who were effectively disenfranchised. (Update: Apparently the 2500 or so residents translates into a few hundred actual voters.)

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Do Mormons really glow? A scientific study

Posted on December 15, 2010 by Adam Brown

Turns out Mormon radar is real. Even without the leggings and layered tops, you can spot a Mormon a mile off.

Maybe you’ve heard something like this before:

There was this sense of “glow” from him, which I heard about many times yet never understood, like a “Mormon Radar.”

Psychologists at the University of Toronto and at Tufts University decided to test whether this “Mormon radar” is real. They collected a bunch of headshots of Mormons and non-Mormons. They eliminated photos with obvious clues (for example, they didn’t use pictures with lip piercings or other things that go against Mormon teachings). Then they showed those headshots to a bunch of people and asked them to guess whether each photo was of a Mormon or not.

Turns out Mormon radar is real. Even without the leggings and layered tops, you can spot a Mormon a mile off. You can find the complete study here.

I realize that this post has little to do with Utah politics, but hey, it’s finals week here at BYU.

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An easy way to boost midterm-year turnout in Utah

Posted on December 10, 2010 by Adam Brown

We could expect a permanent 6.7% boost in Utah’s midterm-year turnout levels if we permanently moved gubernatorial elections to midterm years.

Utah’s lieutenant governor declared that 2010 had the best turnout for a midterm election in Utah since 1994. Although I have criticized that claim, I agree that 2010’s turnout was better than we might have expected if Utah’s turnout had continued the downward trend discussed in this post. Something happened in 2010 that helped midterm-year turnout. What was it?

It was the presence of a gubernatorial race on the ballot.

Usually, Utah elects its governors in presidential years, one of only 9 states to do so. Most states–34 of them–elect their governors in midterm years.1 In 2010, Utah held a special gubernatorial election because Jon Huntsman resigned early in his second term. And it appears that this special election pushed up turnout in Utah.

I gathered turnout data (via Michael McDonald) for every state from 1980 through 2008. (Official 2010 data aren’t available from every state yet.) Then, I ran a bit of analysis to see how these timing decisions influence turnout.2 Here’s what I found.

In a midterm election year without a governor’s race or senate election at the top of the ticket, expect turnout of 36.2%. (That’s averaging across 50 states.)

  • Add a senate race: Turnout rises by 4.9 percent.
  • Add a governor’s race: Turnout rises by 6.7 percent.
  • Add both races: Turnout rises by 8.2 percent.

In a presidential election year without a governor’s race or senate election, expect turnout to be 21.9 percentage points higher (i.e. 58.1%) than in a midterm year.

  • Add a senate race: No change.
  • Add a governor’s race: No change.
  • Add both races: No change.3

In other words, we could expect a permanent 6.7% boost in Utah’s midterm-year turnout levels if we permanently moved gubernatorial elections to midterm years. This change would not hurt presidential-year turnout at all.

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More on whether good Mormons can be good Democrats

Posted on December 7, 2010 by Adam Brown

If it’s hard to persuade Mormon Republicans to cross party lines and vote for a Democrat, that’s because it’s hard to persuade anybody to cross party lines.

Sometimes, people lie to pollsters. Not always, of course. But if you ask people to confess to something that they know makes them look bad, people are likely to lie. If your poll asks men whether they beat their wife, for example, most folks will say they don’t–even those who do. Pollsters call this “social desirability bias.” One example you may have heard of is the “Bradley effect,” where people won’t tell pollsters that they plan to vote against a black candidate for fear of looking racist.1

Recently I posted data showing that Mormons overwhelmingly reject the idea that a good Mormon can’t be a good Democrat. Some folks challenged me on that finding, though, supposing that there might be a social desirability problem. After all, official church statements have made clear that neither party has a church endorsement, so active Mormons may hesitate to confess that they really do believe that a good Mormon can’t be a good Democrat.

Suppose that’s true. It probably is to some extent. How might we detect if Mormons think that the Democratic party is at odds with their religion, even if they won’t say so explicitly?

One thing we could look for is evidence that Mormons are less willing to cross party lines than other folks. If Mormons were more committed partisans than other voters, then maybe that would be evidence that although Mormons won’t admit that they think Democrats are somehow evil, they act like it. Maybe Mormons are completely unwilling to consider voting for a Democrat–less willing than non-Mormons are to crossover.

Turns out the data don’t support that line of thinking. I looked at this a few ways, and I couldn’t find any evidence that Mormons are more committed to their party than anybody else in Utah. (To clarify, I’m not asking whether Mormons are more Republican than other Utahns; I’m asking whether Mormons are more partisan than other Utahns.)

First, let’s look at straight ticket voting. The 2010 Utah Colleges Exit Poll asked respondents in Utah House districts 48 and 63 who they had just voted for. Folks indicated their choice for governor, Senator, U.S. House, and Utah House. Let’s call somebody who chose the same party’s candidate in all four races a straight ticket voter. Here’s the data, with “less active Mormon” and “very active Mormon” defined the same as in my previous post:

Not Mormon Less active Mormon Very active Mormon
Not a straight ticket voter 8% 7% 9%
Straight ticket voter 92% 93% 91%

As you can see, there is no pattern at all. Active Mormons, less active Mormons, and non-Mormons in Utah are equally likely to vote a straight one-party ticket.

Second, let’s look at self-reported partisan loyalty. The exit poll form used in Utah House districts 48 and 63 included this three-part question:

Let’s call anybody who checked “Never” for all three parts of the question a “loyal partisan.” As the table below shows, religion does not correlate with this variable:

Not Mormon Less active Mormon Very active Mormon
Not a loyal partisan 70% 67% 69%
Loyal partisan 31% 33% 31%

Very active Mormons and non-Mormons look basically the same in all these tables. What’s interesting is that less active Mormons look slightly more partisan than very active Mormons and non-Mormons. Maybe that makes sense; I reported in my earlier post that less active Mormons were also more likely to believe that a good Mormon can’t be a Democrat.

Punchline: If there was any social desirability bias distorting my earlier analysis, I can’t find evidence for it here. In fact, the tables posted here reinforce the material I posted earlier. Yes, there are of course some folks in Utah who claim that good Mormons can’t be Democrats. I know a few. But it looks like Mormons aren’t any more committed to their chosen party than anybody else in this state. If it’s hard to persuade Mormon Republicans to cross party lines and vote for a Democrat, that’s because it’s hard to persuade anybody to cross party lines.

I often encounter Democratic candidates and activists pulling out their hair trying to figure out how they can get Mormons to vote for them. They should bear in mind that it’s hard to get anybody to cross party lines, regardless of their religion.

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