Changing Ideological Boots: Adaptive Legislator Behavior in Changing Districts

Congressional roll-call votes are often used to investigate legislative voting behavior. To depict adaptive roll-call behavior in response to demographic changes that occur during redistricting, I use issue specific interest group scores from the ADA, NFU, and COPE. This exploits the bias in the selection of the issues that interest groups utilize to rate U.S. representatives, by using them to reflect changes in response to significant demographic fluctuations in the constituency population. The findings indicate that while party is the most significant factor in whether legislators adapt their voting in favor of certain groups, they do notice group composition changes within district and adapt their voting accordingly. This illustrates the impact of redistricting on policy and legislators' adaptation to changes in district composition.

Grantor dc:publisher

University of North Texas

Year dc:date

2002

Author dc:creator

• Dunaway, Johanna

Contributors dc:contributor

• Feigert, Frank
• Forde, Steven
• Smith, Donald Wiley

• United States. Congress -- Voting.
• United States -- Politics and government -- 20th century.
• party influence
• redistricting
• congress
• legislative behavior
• constituency

Statement dc:rights

• Public
• Copyright
• Dunaway, Johanna
• Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.

Language dc:language

English

Identifier

oclc: 50668506
https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc3254/
ark: ark:/67531/metadc3254

OAI identifier oai:identifier

info:ark/67531/metadc3254