Bush Dogs: the Iraq anti-withdrawal Dems who didn't make the cut [Updated]

by: skeptic06

Sun Aug 19, 2007 at 13:36


(Great info on voting patterns in the 110th Congress, and provided more depth to the Bush Dog discussion. Check out the charts in the extended entry, especially the longer, second one - promoted by Chris Bowers)

Finally, I've managed to sit down and spreadsheet the 110th House rollcall votes up to the August recess. (I started before the Bush Dogs thing got going, but I can't help thinking that was a spur to getting me to finish it!)

So - let's look at the issue of rep loyalty.

There have been 846 RCVs in which Dem reps have cast 187,746 votes. Of these, 8,336 (4.44%) were cast against a Dem majority on the vote in question. Let's, for want of a better expression, call those rebel votes.

skeptic06 :: Bush Dogs: the Iraq anti-withdrawal Dems who didn't make the cut [Updated]

The top 20 rebels (with total rebel votes, plus cumulatives):
TAYLOR MS-4 171 171 2.05
BARROW GA-12 164 335 4.02
MARSHALL GA-8 149 484 5.81
SHULER NC-11 146 630 7.56
MATHESON UT-2 144 774 9.29
ALTMIRE PA-4 137 911 10.93
DONNELLY IN-2 134 1045 12.54
ELLSWORTH IN-8 133 1178 14.13
BOREN OK-2 131 1309 15.7
CARNEY PA-10 117 1426 17.11
COOPER TN-5 115 1541 18.49
BEAN IL-8 108 1649 19.78
MITCHELL AZ-5 105 1754 21.04
LAMPSON TX-22 98 1852 22.22
SPACE OH-18 98 1950 23.39
MURPHY PA-8 95 2045 24.53
MAHONEY FL-16 94 2139 25.66
MELANCON LA-3 94 2233 26.79
TANNER TN-8 94 2327 27.92
MCINTYRE NC-7 85 2412 28.93


  • Of the 846 votes, 11 drew 100 or more Dem reps voting against their party; 54 drew 50 or more rebels.

    In 54 votes, the Dems were rolled - that is, the result of the vote was opposed by a majority of Dem reps participating in it.

    Some of these 54 votes were not doubt on trifling matters; some were not: both the votes on the basis of which Chris is assigning his Bush Dog characterization were Dem rolls.

    There is, naturally, a close correlation between Dem rolls and the size of the Dem rebellion: in 17 of the top 20 votes (in descending order of size of rebellion), the Dems were rolled.

    There's plenty more goodness to extract from these numbers: let's finish, for topicality, with the list of Dem reps who voted for the bad Iraq amendment Chris is using as part of his litmus test (RC 425 on HR 2206) but who are excluded from the definition of Bush Dog because they passed the other element of his test.

    Some biggish names here (shown with the number of rebel votes cast to date):
    MITCHELL AZ-5 105
    MAHONEY FL-16 94
    GIFFORDS AZ-8 79
    BOYDA KS-2 71
    GILLIBRAND NY-20 68
    HOLDEN PA-17 57
    SKELTON MO-4 55
    MOLLOHAN WV-1 54
    STUPAK MI-1 53
    RAHALL WV-3 53
    GREEN TX-29 44
    KANJORSK PA-11 43
    SPRATT SC-5 39
    BERRY AR-1 39
    UDALL CO-2 38
    BERKLEY NV-1 37
    MURTHA PA-12 36
    CARDOZA CA-18 36
    BOUCHER VA-9 36
    SESTAK PA-7 34
    DINGELL MI-15 34
    BAIRD WA-3 33
    RUPPERSBE MD-2 33
    SCOTT GA-13 32
    LARSEN WA-2 31
    KAGEN WI-8 31
    BISHOP GA-2 30
    GONZALEZ TX-20 30
    THOMPSON MS-2 30
    MOORE KS-3 29
    REYES TX-16 29
    SCHWARTZ PA-13 29
    KIND WI-3 29
    BUTTERFI NC-1 27
    CLYBURN SC-6 25
    ORTIZ TX-27 24
    KILDEE MI-5 24
    DICKS WA-6 23
    VISCLOSK IN-1 23
    HINOJOSA TX-15 23
    HOYER MD-5 23
    ANDREWS NJ-1 21
    BACA CA-43 20
    MEEK FL-17 19
    WASSERMA FL-20 19
    DAVIS CA-53 18
    LEVIN MI-12 18
    EMANUEL IL-5 17

    [Just to add: I'd be more than happy to upload the final (so far!) versions of the spreadsheets to somewhere online where everyone could get hold of them (I don't have anywhere myself).]

    [UPDATE]

    And now - we have spreadsheets!

    Following Jeff Wegerson's suggestion below, I have put the summary sheets for Dem reps and votes on Google Docs.

    Let me know how useful you find this: I'd previously tried the thing ages ago, and found it drove me mad (on dialup) with the slow and clunky handling.

    Of course, ideally there would be somewhere on Open Left that we could put XLS files...

    The basic data I used comes from this site, which produces regularly updated RCV details for the current Congress.

    The format (ORD files) requires handling using the pscl package on R (as I described here).

    The vote descriptions are crappy, but are those provided on the RCV pages on the House Clerk's site - the best readily available.

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    Bush Dogs: the Iraq anti-withdrawal Dems who didn't make the cut [Updated] | 14 comments
    CQ, June 2007 (0.00 / 0)
    Did a preliminary study of Dems on "party unity" votes, which they considered "those votes that pitted most Democrats against most Republicans," and analyzed where each of the twelve least loyal freshmen had strayed.
    Useful piece (0.00 / 0)
    Not knowing the vast majority of reps from a hole in the ground, I'd not twigged that such a high proportion of top rebels were freshmen.

    The piece takes unity scores - which have the disadvantage of including loads of procedural votes (like previous question and special rule votes) on which a high degree of unity can be expected more or less whatever the arguments on the merits of the underlying legislation. Unity on these votes generally proves little, and they swamp the votes that really matter.

    But the freshmen discussed in the piece (I find now) are very much those figuring in my list of rebel votes. (A metric which also requires careful analysis, be it said!)

    The influx of not-so-liberal Dem freshmen this year is suggestive of support for a hypothesis I've favored (without ever having done or seen anything on it) that the bigger the Dem House majority gets, the more conservative becomes the marginal Dem rep.

    [ Parent ]
    It's Only Natural (0.00 / 0)
    that the larger a party's representation is, the more diverse it becomes, and the more the marginal representative moves away from the normative one.  This is just straightforward math.

    What requires explaning is when this (along with other signs of an expanded majority) doesn't happen.  This is what, in a sense, Hacker and Pierson were working on in Off Center, although they didn't focus on the marginal Representative metric.

    Of course, the Republicans have always had more party discipline than the Democrats. So that needs to be taken into account as well.

    "You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

    [ Parent ]
    Yes, but... (0.00 / 0)
    I've found so many things about the wild and wacky world of American politics are counterintuitive - counter to my intuitions, at least - as to be loathe to accept what stands to reason as correct.

    I agree that, given the current ideological polarization of the parties, it's more likely to be true than, for instance, in the 50s and 60s: for instance, the Dems had their breakthrough liberal surge in 1958 at the same time as boosting their majorities in both houses. (As my squint at the ideology of the 90th House suggested, the parties were an ideological dog's breakfast at the time.) 

    To the extent that it's true now, it would make the task of boosting the progressive element of the Congressional parties all the harder...

    [ Parent ]
    And There Was An Explanation For 1958 (0.00 / 0)
    I understand your wrap about the counter-intuitive, but this is purely based on mathematics, like any game of chance.

    The only underlying informaiton needed to make my observation a purely mathematical one is the fact that in most US elections there isn't a major shift in ideological preference.  And this is, indeed, the case.  Even with wave elections, it's more likely to be a general "through the bums out" response, which mostly shifts marginal seats from one party to the other--though a larger number of them than in a non-wave election.

    Now, as a matter of fact, we are experiencing an ideological shift, however this shift is being countered by the risk-averse, media-whipped Democratic leadership.  The result is something that's statistically "normal," even though the underlying dynamics almost certainly is not.

    "You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

    [ Parent ]
    in this Congress (0.00 / 0)
    the Republican vote has been split more... at least, at WaPo database, they have only 83.8% party unity.  I imagine it's a function of being in the minority.

    New Jersey politics at Blue Jersey.
    [ Parent ]
    You Imagine Correctly! (0.00 / 0)
    Although I can't say from direct examination of the data, which I haven't undertaken, it's a general principle that the majority party gets to set the agenda, and thus tends to produce votes that unify its own members and split the opposition as often as possible, while avoiding the reverse.

    Of course, when majorities get large enough, this strategy retreats in importance.  But we're not there yet.

    "You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

    [ Parent ]
    Not A Voting Majority--What About Those Who Didn't Vote? (4.00 / 1)
    That's an average of 221.92 Dems voting and 9.85 defections, for an average 212.07 with the party--not a majority.

    But what happened to the non-voting Dems?  When things are this close, the failure to vote needs to be tracked as well.

    "You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

    One for the list! (n/t) (0.00 / 0)
    n/t
    [ Parent ]
    Google Spreadsheets! n/t (4.00 / 1)


    Jeff Wegerson
    Limited space a problem (0.00 / 0)
    A paltry 100,000 cells per sheet!
    [ Parent ]
    So how big are we talking (0.00 / 0)
    Both spreadsheet wise and byte wise.

    Jeff Wegerson
    [ Parent ]
    I tried it (n/t) (0.00 / 0)

    [ Parent ]
    freshman distribution (0.00 / 0)
    Late to comment- just got to this interesting piece, following a link from FDL.

    One point not made in the above discussion (comments) about the spectrum of D freshmen is that there was a huge inequality in the $$ and logistical support different candidates received during primaries and after, thanks to the DCCC.  Many progressives were fighting an uphill battle on this account.

    Bush Dogs: the Iraq anti-withdrawal Dems who didn't make the cut [Updated] | 14 comments
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