2017 Politics

Donald Trump will be sworn in as President of the United States next Friday, 20 January 2017. This surprised most analysts including ourselves! We expected to be writing posts during 2017 about splits in the Republican Party due to President Hillary Clinton’s pressing a legislative program that would have been attractive to enough Republicans to have caused serious conflict in the Republican caucuses. Instead we have a President who is both a real estate tycoon and a television entertainer. What his policy views are in many areas are opaque (to say the least).

What we find alarming is the unprecedented collapse of the long-term structure of Congressional Voting during the past 20 years. Contrary to what many scholars say when they cite our book, Congress: A Political-Economic History of Roll Call Voting (1997, New York: Oxford University Press), Poole and Rosenthal DO NOT CLAIM that voting in Congress is largely one-dimensional. Rather Poole and Rosenthal show that a two-dimensional dynamic spatial model is the best fitting model for Congresses 1 – 99.

What has happened in the past 20 years is that the second dimension of Congressional voting has slowly evaporated. As late as the 1990s the second dimension picked up differences within each of the parties over abortion, gun rights, and other social or lifestyle issues. For example, on the vexed issue of abortion each Party had a pro-choice and a pro-life faction. Hence, roll call votes on Abortion often cut through the parties along the second dimension. The same was true for gun control (see the spatial maps in this post). Hare and Poole show the second dimension disappearing in a variety of issue areas in this analysis.

The two figures below show that the extraordinary divisiveness that has marked American Politics since November 2000 has resulted in Congressional voting to collapse into a one dimensional near Parliamentary voting structure; that is, the parties are very unified as shown by Party Unity Scores. The first graph shows the correct classification for each House in 10, 2, and 1 dimensions using Optimal Classification. Note the dramatic convergence of all three measures during the past 20 years. This shows that almost every issue is voted along “liberal-conservative” (it is hard to make sense what this dimension means any more!) lines. Furthermore, no other period in American history shows this pattern.

Click image to enlarge

This graph shows the Aggregate Proportional Reduction in Error (APRE) ([{Minority Vote on a RC – Classification Error}/Minority Vote on a RC], summed over all the scaled roll calls). The APRE controls for the margins of the roll calls. The same pattern of collapse is shown here as well.

Click image to enlarge

Donald Trump will be the third consecutive President who is widely disliked by members of the opposite Party. Indeed, Trump’s personality coupled with the extraordinary party unity within each party will mean that American Politics will enter a phase that has never been seen before. We hope things do not melt down but we would not bet our mortgages on it!

The 114^th Congress has finally ended. The most polarized Congress since the early 20^th Century and one where almost all issues have been drawn into the first dimension [we will address dimensionality in a future post; the current period is unique in American history].

In our last post cited above, we, like most other election watchers, assumed that Secretary Clinton was on a path to a certain victory over Donald Trump. This post would have dealt with what we anticipated to be certain splits within the Republican caucus of the House (we expected the Senate to be 50-50 or 49-51 in favor of the Democrats). All that has changed.

However, it is hard to see how some of President-Elect Trump’s policy positions can be reconciled with the views of the Republican Caucus in either Chamber. For example, in this blog post by Sam Quinones he discusses how the opioid epidemic is correlated with Donald Trump’s Performance in the Election [the analysis in the linked PDF is by Shannon Monnat of Penn State University]. As Quinones notes, these areas that strongly supported Trump will require “massive investment in drug treatment before they can be great again.” We called attention to Quinones’ work in a post early this year and in this op-ed by CDC Chief Thomas Friedman he discusses the seriousness of this epidemic.

Below is a smoothed histogram of the 114^th House and Senate using our Constant Space DW-NOMINATE Scores. Note the gap between McConnell (R-KY) and Ryan (R-WI) and the gap between Pelosi (D-CA) and Schumer (D-NY). Add in the filibuster requirement of 60 votes on legislation and it is hard to see how Trump can pass meaningful social policy to help those areas that strongly supported him. Trump may be more successful with taxes and deregulation that would help his supporters but that remains to be seen. The 115^th Congress will not be boring.

Click image to enlarge