Suchergebnisse

Walter Olson


A widely noted new draft paper by two political scientists, Justin Grimmer of Stanford and Eitan Hersh of Tufts, surveys existing research and reaches a conclusion consistent with what I've argued for some time: for all the talk of democracy hanging in the balance from "voter suppression" and the like, "nearly all contemporary election laws have small effects on partisan election outcomes." That goes for (to name a few) the availability of mail and lockbox voting as an alternative to in‐​person Election Day voting, voter registration through motor vehicles offices, and the dropping of inactive voters from registration rolls. An excerpt from the paper's abstract:
Contemporary election reforms that are purported to increase or decrease turnout tend to have negligible effects on election outcomes. We offer an analytical framework to explain why. Contrary to heated political rhetoric, election policies have small effects on outcomes because they tend to target small shares of the electorate, have a small effect on turnout, and/​or affect voters who are relatively balanced in their partisanship.…
The caustic rhetoric that suggests the partisan stakes for election administration reform are very high is detached from empirical reality. Even very close elections are decided by margins larger than the magnitude of election reforms we examine in this paper. Further, the party that benefits from changes is often unclear. In all but the absolute closest elections, modest electoral reforms cannot affect partisan outcomes.

Here's what I wrote for Cato a year and a half ago, after noting that for all the fuss about voter ID laws, there is no evidence they in fact affect registration, turnout, or election outcomes:
As it happens, a lot of claims commonly made about voter suppression on the one hand and ballot integrity on the other are surprisingly hard to validate. Some of the states with the most restrictive rules, for example, are also known for having some of the highest voter turnouts. Early, absentee, and by‐​mail voting affect when and how Americans vote, but there's much less evidence that they make a big difference in who decides to vote or which side wins.
In the 2020 election, following years of claims of mounting voter suppression, voter turnout soared to a level not previously seen in modern times.

The election reforms that most often stir controversy, Grimmer and Hersh write, tend not to change partisan balance much because they "target narrow shares of the population, have a small effect on turnout, and/​or are imprecisely targeted at members of political parties." They take up various hotly contested current voting reforms and find that they do not detectably influence partisan outcomes. For example, Arizona's controversial practice of not counting ballots cast out of precinct drew a Voting Rights Act challenge that went to the Supreme Court in Brnovich v. DNC, but in fact the group of voters affected varied little by race from that of the state electorate overall.
Contrary to widespread assumptions, they find that re‐​enfranchisement of felons who have served their terms would not provide a big boost for Democrats, in part because relatively few felons take advantage of the restored franchise and in part because many who do vote Republican. (In fact, they project that Republicans would actually stand to gain more votes than Democrats in 19 states, Arizona among them, if felons got re‐​enfranchised coast to coast.)
That ties in with another point that bears emphasis: many old ideas about who votes for which party are no longer useful. "Voter suppression" narratives often rest on the notion that poorer and less educated voters will be differentially discouraged by some requirement. Nowadays, however—if not 40 years ago—those groups overall may lean Republican.
Grimmer and Hersh go on to offer evidence against the sometimes‐​made argument that the lack of effects on outcomes is the result of counter‐​mobilization fueled by opponents' outrage. They do identify one policy choice that seems to have real and substantial effects on partisan outcomes, namely the decision whether to hold municipal elections on or off the federal cycle, which can result (among other effects) in helping nationalize the politics of local races. Ironically, that particular reform has been the subject of hardly any national partisan controversy.
In short, Grimmer and Hersh's paper undercuts much of the received opinion about "voter suppression." They summarize their findings: "compared to dire warnings and predictions in the public square, scholars have found only modest relationships between these laws and election participation and no consistent relationship between 'suppression' laws and partisan outcomes."
And they go on to draw two excellent conclusions, which I heartily second. First, a clear implication should be "to lower the temperature [yes!] on election administration policies.…the media should not portray every change in an election law as a red‐​alert scenario that will determine future elections." I've argued that the most serious challenge to democratic norms is likely instead to come from a different direction, namely from some groups' refusal to accept as legitimate the outcomes of elections held in ordinary and regular form.
Their second point is also on target: a turn away from the relentless search for partisan advantage should not mean setting aside these issues of election procedure as unimportant. It should instead mean seeking to resolve them on their merits. Getting election procedure right can have major benefits for administrative efficiency, voter convenience, detection of bad practices, speed of tabulation, and the restoring of public confidence in outcomes, to name only a few of its legitimate goals. Let's get on with it.

After almost every election, you'll hear experts and pundits lamenting the lack of voter turnout. But does the research have anything to say about what policies would increase representation?

Our very own Anthony Fowler explains a new report that he co-authored in Brookings that argues we will get better representation but instituting compulsory voting in the U.S. But in a country where we can't even get everyone to wear a mask, what are the odds that compulsory voting would work here?

Much research has established that radical right parties tend to act as anti-feminist actors, opposing feminist policy proposals, but also instrumentalise certain feminist policy goals for their own objectives. Research is more inconclusive about the gender values of radical right voters. Does feminism even matter to these voters? If so, what are their stances? In my recently published article, I use interviews with radical right voters to investigate these questions. In recent years and across various democracies, the rise of the radical right and its implications for women's and LGBTQI+ rights have become increasingly important. A growing group of people are voting for these often openly anti-feminist parties. While much research shows that these voters are most strongly motivated by ...

The killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, and many other black people at the hands of police have driven nationwide protests. To be true to our mission, we want to look at this complex moment through the lens of research.

No paper is getting more attention than Princeton Asst. Professor Omar Wasow's "Agenda Seeding: How 1960s Black Protests Moved Elites, Public Opinion and Voting". On this episode, we discuss the substance of the paper, and the controversies that have surrounde

The Louisiana Legislature made history in the 2023 Veto
Session, in the process giving some Republicans a chance to display their
middle fingers to Louisianans and some Democrats to gamble on fooling enough
voter to gain successful reelection.

Louisiana's most remarkable legislative passage ever occurred when HB 648 by
Republican state Rep. Gabe Firment
crossed the finish line. This was a bill rogue GOP state Sen. Fred Mills (aided by some
stupid planning by Sen. Pres. Page
Cortez) killed
in committee, only to
have it resurrected through rarely-used parliamentary procedures, killed
again by Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards,
only to have the veto
session reanimate it into law, representing the first time ever a regular
session bill had its veto successfully overridden.

The bill prohibits medical interventions, whether
chemical or surgical, to alter a minor's sex. It simply became a litmus test
that even the most shallow Republicans and Democrats endangered for reelection
had to support because it so self-evidently was needed. In their remarks
carrying the bill in their respective chambers, Firment and Republican state
Sen. Jay Morris demolished
the evidence-free and weak argumentation of opponents to establish that children
didn't have the maturity to make such an irreversible decision, that many who in
their haste did later regretted it, that such procedures often addressed a
symptom of an underlying disorder and wasn't the disorder, that these didn't
stop suicidal ideation for many, and that worldwide (within the last year country
after country has placed similar bans on these actions) medical opinion
supported such bans while further research occurred.

Thus, no Republican dared vote to
sustain – although one prior vote for it, Paula Davis,
didn't show up for the session, and another who played hooky, Joe Stagni, had
been the only member of the party to vote against it – and Democrats Roy Daryl Adams,
Chad Brown,
Robby Carter,
Mack Cormier,
Travis Johnson,
Dustin Miller, and
Pat Moore
joined in overriding. Reelection chances for Adams, Brown, Cormier, and to a
lesser extent Carter would have been seriously endangered had they not voted to
override.

The three most vulnerable, plus Moore, also
protected their reelection hopes with votes to override vetoes on HB 466, which
would have prevented school employees from psychological coaching of students
about their gender identity in ways inconsistent with state instructional
standards and protect school employees and students from confusion over pronoun
use of students, and on HB 81 which would
have covered pronoun usage like HB 466. Yet the latter received only 68 votes
and the former 69.

Part of that had to do with the strategic absences
of Stagni and Davis, which dropped the 71 Republicans to one below threshold.
But it was the actions of other Republicans, specifically Mary DuBuisson,
Barbara
Freiberg, Stephanie
Hilferty, gubernatorial candidate Richard Nelson,
and Speaker Pro Tem Tanner Magee,
who torpedoed the will of the vast majority of their party to override by
voting to sustain, while at the same time providing political cover to members
of the other party on these issues.

But beyond that, vulnerable Democrats decided to
take their chances on a number of other bills opposition to which is less toxic
to more terms. HB
182, which would have prohibited requiring Wuhan coronavirus vaccinations
to attend educational institutions; HB 646 which
would have provided greater scrutiny of electoral rolls; and HB 188 which
would have tightened parole requirements for dangerous offenders, among others,
all narrowly missed the two-thirds threshold to succeed. Again, the curiously-timed
absences of Davis and Stagni kept the margins below threshold, allowing
Democrats with uniformity to sustain.

Note that the GOP votes to sustain often were
traitorous or sandbagging. Various combinations of DuBuisson, Freiberg,
Hilferty, Magee, and Nelson on HB 81 and HB 466 either went from yea to nay or
had not voted on original concurrence with the Senate and then to sustain.

Two other measures did get passed along to the
Senate. HB 125,
which would have prohibited ownership of farm land by nationals of countries
designated as foreign adversaries, picked up the support of Adams, Cormier, and
Moore (Brown was absent), and HB 399, which
would have required school communications about vaccinations to include information
about state law allowing opting out, was passed along only because Democrat Tammy Phelps
vote to override.

As choreographed among certain Democrats, the GOP
House leadership, and a few Republicans the voting patterns appeared in the
House, the collusion in the Senate perhaps even exceeded that. The few Senate
vetoed bills simply were shoved aside with no attempt to allow them to leave.
That's perhaps because when HB 125 and HB 399 arrived,
Republicans Louie Bernard,
Fred Mills, and Rogers Pope
voted against overriding, while the GOP's Patrick Connick opted out of voting
for the former and joined them in voting on the latter. These RINOs probably
let it be known they wouldn't vote for any overrides except for HB 648 (not including
Mills).

This fall, constituents of Davis, DuBuisson,
Freiberg, Hilferty, Magee, Nelson (running for governor), Stagni, and Connick
(Bernard, Mills, and Pope aren't running again) need to understand how these
elected officials gave them the middle-fingered salute on a number of good
bills that led to the defeat of these quality instruments. And those of Adams,
Brown, Robby Carter, and Cormier need to realize how their representatives are
trying to con them into making voters think they have an agenda that they don't.
Then, voters need to push buttons accordingly.

In Democrat state Sen. Jay Luneau's world, ideology is
more important than people, to which his sponsorship of SB 81 attests.
Why a pair of Republicans would sign onto that is anybody's guess.

The bill would add the word "gender" to prohibited
classification in the setting of vehicle insurance rates in Louisiana, as is
the case in only seven others. It's all that's left from a string of demagogic bills
Luneau kept proposing in past sessions that have tried to circumscribe
rate-setting tools for insurers that, in every case, legitimately price risk,
which deservedly bit the dust.

As is typical, the argument for this particular attenuation
was intellectual mishmash. Luneau presented a single study as proof alleged discrimination
occurred against women merely for gender, but then he and Senate Insurance
Committee supporters also argued that nobody really knew what goes into
pricing – a sentiment also shared by other on the committee against it. In
regards to the fact brought out in testimony that most studies showed men
nationally paid more and so this change likely would cause the same in
Louisiana, Luneau replied that the (tepid) tort reform measures passed (over
his objections) three years ago actually saw increases in rates in years
following, implying this wouldn't happen.

In other words, if a piece of evidence fits his
worldview, it's acceptable; if not, it's questionable. A more rigorously
intellectual evaluation of the vast disparity of research conclusions on the
question is that the rate-setting calculus is very complex and difficult to do
at an individual level, so categorical comparisons very much depend upon the
parameters defining the study, such as policy limits, sample of the universe of
policies, quotes vs. actual policy issued, etc. But it is telling that the preponderance
of evidence, and typically including those most comprehensive in scope, show
nationwide men pay more than women, and this is reflected in most studies. If
women somewhere on average pay more, it's because of any of dozens of other
reasonable factors running against them override the advantage they have on
sex.

That makes perfect theoretical sense, as women
overall have fewer accidents and display less risky driving behavior as indicated
by frequency of moving violations. More specifically, younger males make up the
bulk of that, with records leveling into middle age, and then the disparity
returns at advanced ages. All other things equal, the data demonstrate that women
in the aggregate are safer drivers than men, and there's no reason insurance
companies shouldn't have the option of using this data point in their pricing.

But notice as well the absolute intellectual
poverty of Luneau's bald assertion that discrimination by sex is so powerful
and pervasive that it must drive rate differences negatively against women,
based upon his narrow choice of data to accept. Each year, the rate differential
varies, and it varies, sometimes dramatically, by state. So, given the insistence
that absolutely and powerfully prejudice against women drives rates, we are to
believe that in states where women pay more insurance companies there – firms which
perhaps write policies in other states where the opposite is true – decide to practice
selective prejudicial discrimination in those places? And in other states they
don't? And some years they do and some years they don't?

His thinking on this is a supremely incoherent
mess. He must think that where men pay higher rates as a whole they must be so incredibly
bad drivers as to overcome the alleged natural bias against women he claims
inherent to rate-setting – without a shred of proof countering the far more likely
explanation is the data reflect a claim history where women are involved in fewer
incidents causing less damage that has a significant impact on rates. And his
rejection of that bit of common sense must mean he thinks Louisiana men are the
worst of the worst.

Because using
data from the latest research, guess which state is the one where men pay
more than women than in any other? His bill would end up driving the typical
female's rate in Louisiana by at least a couple of hundred dollars while males
will catch something of a break.

And the fact that in Louisiana women pay an
average $404 less than men may be worse for all consumers if policy writers are
forced make gender irrelevant, beyond the point committee chairman GOP state
Sen. Kirk Talbot observed that writers don't care who pays what differentially just
as long as they can charge enough to afford to stay in business. Indeed, research demonstrates
that this kind of law not only causes women generally to pay higher rates (all
other factors equal) than they would otherwise, but also pushes rates higher
for everybody.

Regardless, the measure
passed but only because two Republicans stupidly voted in favor to allow it
to squeak out 5-4. One, state Sen. Louie Bernard, has a
horrible record on voting sensibly on insurance matters – so bad, in
conjunction with a few other leftist flirtations, that with his reelection
chances imperiled by these clunkers he announced he would retire after just
one term.

The other cast his favorable vote as part of an expanding
tendency to sabotage any political career he might have. Until recently very
solid in his political calculations that included consistently voting
conservatively, state Sen. Barrow
Peacock began to see the wheels come off any chance of extending his shelf
life in politics after term limitation this year when he backed, to the chagrin
of nearly every Shreveport Republican political activist, leftist Democrat
state Sen. Greg Tarver
in the city's mayoral race last year. That
completely backfired when conservative Republican Tom Arceneaux
upset Tarver.

His vote for the bill especially seemed schizophrenic
since in the recent special session he had made
a principled argument against $45 million to subsidize insurers to write
property policies in the state. Yet on this one he either abandoned principle
reasonably related to this past voting behavior or he completely erroneously
evaluated the bill's implications.

Neither commend him to continued service in
elected office. It will be interesting to see, if the bill comes to a floor
vote as expected, whether he'll take a step back from going down the path of political
self-immolation by changing his vote on it.

Several obvious reversals are on tap for Louisiana's upcoming veto session, but the balloting that affirmed this regathering of the Legislature provides clues as to what other worthy legislation should be resurrected, and why these bills might be, after their attempted murders by Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards. This marks the third year in a row a veto session will have convened – previously for the 2021 Regular Session and for the First Extraordinary Session of 2022 – but the first with better-than two-thirds supermajorities attached. Only 31 of 105 representatives and 12 of 39 senators sent in ballots requesting cancellation. That distribution didn't quite fall along partisan lines. With no party state Rep. Joe Marino sending in a ballot, Democrat state Sens. Katrina Jackson and Greg Tarver essentially switched places with Republican state Sens. Fred Mills and Rogers Pope. Among other representatives, Democrat state Reps. Roy Daryl Adams, Chad Brown, and Robby Carter all withheld ballots. This pattern suggests several bills will enjoy veto overrides in the House, which require supermajorities, beginning with three, HB 81, HB 466, and HB 648. The last would prohibit medical interventions to alter the sex of children, where research shows such interventions regretted by almost a third of all children guided into these and a significant portion of others years later feeling no more positively about themselves. HB 466 would prevent school employees from psychological coaching of students about their gender identity in ways inconsistent with state instructional standards and protect school employees and students from confusion over pronoun use of students. HB 81 would cover pronoun usage like HB 466. Final version passages reveal that HB 466 will win favor easily, with no GOP House dissent and the three Democrats on board under original passage. It wouldn't be necessary to bring up HB 81 in that case, as its text basically is a subset of HB 466, but it also enjoys similar majorities. With HB 648, GOP state Rep. Joe Stagni did defect originally, but the three Democrats plus others more than made up for that. As well, these are electoral life-and-death matters for Democrat state Rep. Mack Cormier, who although voting against the session must vote for overrides if he has any hope of winning reelection. Greater uncertainty lies on the Senate side. Last year, Pope helped to torpedo a veto session aligned with the regular session by saying he wouldn't vote for overrides even for matters he had voted for, with his vote again not to have one perhaps indicative of the same attitude. Fred Mills' voting not to affirm may indicate his hostility towards HB 648, but he might vote to override other things. Regardless, at least on that and HB 81/HB 466 Jackson and Tarver, both voting for all three, will offset. These three are near-locks for success, but the picture is murkier for others. The key to whether others come up for overrides depends upon how these put endangered Democrats in a bind electorally, focusing on taxes, crime, and health and election policies. SB 1 and SB 6 had just a single vote cast against them together, with the linked bills potentially swapping the corporate franchise tax for half of the Quality Jobs Program tax credit, which over the year would become a net tax decrease, so these likely would make it even if marching order went out from Edwards to legislative Democrats to reverse their previous approval. SB 159, which would make seventeen-year-olds potentially prosecutable as adults for some heinous crimes, has with the defection of GOP state Rep. Barry Ivey on original approval just enough to override if everything else stays the same. Another bill dealing with crime and minors that could see salvation is HB 659 that would aid especially in reducing repeat offenses by creating a statewide database of crimes committed by minors. HB 188 would tighten parole requirements; both had a few Democrats approve, perhaps hoping for their votes to be merely symbolic and not substantive with a veto but now they have to go along again or else face voter retribution. Among others utilizing the same dynamic, HB 399 that would have schools inform parents with their annual mailer about vaccinations that these are optional seems a good bet to gain new life, but a companion HB 182 that would prohibit schools requiring vaccination against the Wuhan coronavirus, because of the defection of Republican state Sen. Patrick Connick originally, will have to thread the needle. HB 646 would increase election integrity with an additional annual canvass of voters, but faces almost as tight a vote in the Senate as the original vote split among party lines among those present. Perhaps other victims will come up in the session that will last no more than five days, but Edwards, probably knowingly, vetoed many as he knew several high-profile ones would escape but perhaps leave some little ones behind. Regardless, overriding a handful of his vetoes would make more history under the governorship of Edwards, but from his perspective for the wrong reasons. 

In 1959, the Gallup Poll asked "In your opinion, do you think there may be dishonesty in the voting or counting of votes in your district?"  They repeated that question in 1964 (as I once said, it's interesting that they didn't repeat it in late 1960, since that election was very close and there were allegations that voter fraud had made the difference).  That's the only question on voter fraud I can find until the 21st century.  Although the recent questions have been worded differently, I think that they are similar enough to make a comparison useful, so I give it below.  The first column is pessimistic responses--agree that there may be dishonesty or not confident (combining not too and not at all) that votes will be accurately cast and counted.     "In your opinion, do you think there may be dishonesty in the voting or counting of votes in your district?"April 1959    13%    71%March 1964  13%    69%"How confident are you that, ______ , the votes will be accurately cast and counted in this [or next] year's election?"                    where you vote                     across the countryOct 2006         8%      91%                                 25%      75%Nov 2007      12%      88%                                 30%      71%Aug  2016     16%      81%                                 36%      62%Oct   2016     14%      84%                                 33%      66%Sept 2020      21%      79%                                 41%      59%In 2006-7, negative responses for "where you vote" were below the level of negative responses for "your district" in 1959-64.  In 2016, they were a little higher, and in September 2020, they were clearly higher.  In 1959 and 1964, there were a substantial number of don't know answers--in the 21st century, very few.   I don't think that's specific to this issue--there seems to have been a general decline in don't know answers over the years.  On this question, I'd regard don't know as closer to an optimistic answer--that is, saying that you don't know of any reason to think so.   But if you count some of the don't knows as pessimistic answer, that just reinforces the point that pessimistic answers were more common in 1959 and 1964 than in the early 2000s.  In the 21st century, they also asked about "across the country" (the different questions were given to random halves of the sample).  Pessimistic answers were consistently higher, but they followed the same course of change over time.  This is related to the issues I discussed in my last post.  General trust in people and confidence in institutions, especially political institutions, has been declining for a long time.  To the extent that views of elections reflect general trust, you would expect them to be more negative in the early 2000s than in the 1950s and 1960s.  But they weren't, and may even have been more positive.  I've mentioned a question asked in a Washington Post survey shortly after the Supreme Court ruling gave George Bush the victory in 2000:  "Whatever its faults, the United States still has the best system of government in the world":   89% agreed, including 85% of Gore supporters.  That is, a general loss of confidence in institutions didn't lead to a loss of confidence in elections, because politicians and journalists kept up a tradition of not just accepting the results, but celebrating our electoral system and history after an election.  It wasn't until Trump broke from that tradition that public confidence fell.[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

 It's become common to speak of "red" and "blue" states, and to note that the "blue" (Democratic) states are richer than the "red" ones.  But the states are of widely different sizes, and some are very large, so they are probably not the best units to look at.  Representative Marcy Kaptur's office has produced a chart that shows median household income and party control by Congressional district.  There is a clear tendency for Democratic districts to have higher incomes--e. g., Ruy Teixeira says "The first page is heavily dominated by blue but the second, poorer page is a sea of red."  However, on looking at the chart, it seemed that it wasn't a simple matter of "the richer the district, the more likely to elect a Democrat."  Specifically, it seemed that the probability of electing a Democrat first declined and then increased as you went from low to high income.  But it's easy to imagine patterns when there's really nothing but random variation, so I looked more systematically.  After ranking the districts from low to high income, I computed a 50-seat moving average--seats 1-50, then seats 2-51, 3-52, ....392-441.*  The proportion of Democrats against the income of the middle district in the group:The pattern is even more complicated than I thought--the chance of electing a Democrat first falls, then rises, then remains steady once the median income reaches about $80,000 (about a quarter of districts are above that level).  There are hints that it increases again at the very top (9 of the 10 districts with the highest median income are represented by Democrats), but it's not possible to be sure.  The Democratic share is at a minimum when the median income is about $65,000.  I don't have any explanation--I'm just offering it as something to think about.  A few other observations:1.  The discussion of this chart has treated it as an example of the Democrats' problems with working-class voters, but the individual and district level relationships are different issues.   Congressional districts are large (about 800,000 people), so they all contain a range of classes.  Consequently, it would be possible for the Democrats to do better in richer districts and better among working-class voters--in fact, this is what a classical Marxist analysis would predict.  Of course, this is not the case in the United States today, but it means that the district-level relationship needs its own explanation.2.  Back in the 1950s, Seymour Martin Lipset observed that conservative parties sometimes did better in the poor regions of a nation (e. g., southern Italy).  His explanation was that those regions hadn't moved fully into a capitalist economy, so that their voters followed the lead of traditional elites, but this isn't applicable to the US today.  Curiously, the issue hasn't received much attention in subsequent research--I don't recall having seen anything, and my searches in Google Scholar drew a blank.  3.  A common method for detecting non-linearity is to include a squared term in addition to the original.  But when you do that with these data, the t-ratio for the squared term was less than one.  In fact, you had to go up to the fifth power before one was statistically significant, and people rarely go that high.  So in this case, if you used a polynomial regression, you'd probably miss the non-linearity.     *The chart includes non-voting delegates as well as representatives.  

 

Hundreds
of millions of Indian citizens have begun to vote and they will keep doing it
for six weeks. Indian democratic elections are the most massive human
mobilizations in the world —more than any other election, war, pilgrimage,
migration movement, or world fair. There are more than one million polling
stations and even a team of elephants to carry voting machines to the Himalaya.
Unlike in many other democracies, electoral turnout in India is higher among
the poor than among the rich, among the less educated than among the graduates,
in the villages than in the cities. Since the last elections, five years ago,
women vote (a little) more than men.

The
success of democracy in India has dismissed the pessimistic auguries after the
independence and the first election in 1952. But India is not an isolated case.
Let's see the numbers. A little more than half of the world's population lives
in democracy. Let's consider that "rich" countries are those above the world
average per capita income (in purchasing power, around $ 18,000 per year), and
"poor" are those below that threshold. About half of the world population
living in democracy lives in relatively poor countries (including India, but
also Indonesia, South Africa, and others), while about half of the population
living in dictatorships lives in relatively rich countries (including China,
but also S. Arabia, Russia, and others).

Some
traditional sociologists have been puzzled by the India case because it does
not fit the classical doctrine that economic development must precede democracy:
from Seymour Lipset to Adam Przeworski, who has "repeatedly predict India as a
dictatorship" before 2030. Yet, India is not an exception or an anomaly. The
earliest modern democracies, such as Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom,
or the United States, had also enforced broad male suffrage for competitive
elections in the nineteenth century when they were fairly poor, as poor as
India was in the mid-twentieth century or as is now.

For
about forty years after independence, when the government was dominated by the
Indian National Congress party, initially led by Jawaharlal Nehru, the
centralized and closed Indian economy grew at an often-mocked annual rate of
1%. But since the early 1990s, when it has liberalized and opened to new
technologies and globalization, India has enjoyed significant benefits from
open trade and capital inflows. Against all expectations, the Indian per capita
income at purchasing power has multiplied by five in thirty years. Precisely
because India was late in adopting more sophisticated institutions and
policies, it has been able to adapt more readily to the global economy. In
contrast to developed countries with old technologies and onerous preexisting
social arrangements, India has not had to dismantle former industrial and
bureaucratic structures that might have obstructed innovation.

Consequently,
the Indian citizens declare to prefer democracy to an authoritarian regime in a
proportion of four to one. In the most recent international poll by the Pew
Research Center, 72% of Indian citizens declare to be satisfied with the way
democracy works in their country --only after Sweden and in contrast with, for
example, 33% in the United States. (Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes
& Trends, 2024).

The Congress
Party, always led by Nehru's descendants Gandhi family, and the current incumbent
People's Party (BJP) led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have alternated in
government seven times. The electoral system is a copy of the colonial British
tradition of single-member districts by simple plurality rule, which permits a
party with less than 40% of votes to get an absolute majority of seats in the lower
chamber of parliament. Yet, while numerous minor parties run independently, the
two larger parties run in very broad electoral coalitions: in the current
election, the incumbent BJP has formed a National Democratic Alliance with 12 mostly
state-based or ethnic parties, while the opposition Congress is running in an
India National Development Inclusive Alliance (to fit the acronym INDIA) with
23 parties, including several on the far left. Their participation in federal
politics also works as a factor of Indian union.

After
the end of the Cold War, the old Indian foreign policy of "non-alignment" was
initially replaced with one of "strategic autonomy." India remains outside the
United Nations Security Council, despite having become a nuclear power, and
outside the Group of Seven despite being the fourth democratic economy in size.
Nevertheless, India has become more dynamic in supporting the democratization
of its neighboring countries in South Asia, which is still a poorly integrated
region. It is also the oldest and most stable democracy of the so-called BRICS
group, now enlarged to nine members, and it has recently increased its
relations and deals with the United States and the European Union in a world of
fluctuating international coalitions. From a global and historical perspective,
democracy in India is already one of the most remarkable contemporary achievements
of humankind.

 Also in Spanish and Catalan in La Vanguardia:https://www.lavanguardia.com/opinion/20240429/9605408/mayor-fiesta-democratica-mundo.html

 Exactly a year ago, I had a post about a survey question from 1993 on whether members of Congress should follow public opinion or their own judgment when voting on issues.  I wasn't planning on marking the anniversary, but by coincidence I recently ran across other questions on the same issue, from 1939 and 1940.  They aren't identical to the 1993 question, but seem similar enough to be compared.  The overall distributions:            Own       Public     1939     38            59          A1940     32            64          A1940     35            39          B1993     23            70          CThe exact questions:A.  Should members of Congress vote according to their own best judgment or according to the way the people in their districts feel?B.  In cases when a Congressman's opinion is different from that of the majority of people in his district, do you think he should usually vote according to his own best judgment, or according to the way a majority of his district feels?C.  When your representative in Congress votes on an issue, which should be more important:  the way that voters in your district feel about the issue, or the Representative's own principles and judgment about what is best for the country?The percent choosing the "own judgment" option is substantially lower in the 1993 question than in all three of the 1939-40 questions. It seems to me that the addition of  "what is best for the country" in the 1993 question made the "own judgment" side sound more favorable, so if the differences in question wording mattered they probably understated the change.  In looking at the 1993 question, I had found that education didn't make much difference.  The 1939 and 1940 surveys didn't ask about education, but they had variables for occupation and interviewer's rating of social standing.  People of "higher" position were a bit more likely to say that representatives should follow their own judgement, but it was only a small difference.  I tried a few other demographic variables, which didn't make much difference.  So the major story is simply the difference in the overall distributions.  Of course, 1993 was 30 years ago, so we don't know what's happened since then.   It seems strange that no one has asked about the issue since then, so I'll make another attempt to find questions.The 1939 survey also asked about a question I've written about before "Do people who are successful get ahead largely because of their luck or largely because of their ability?"  The same question was also asked in 1970 and then in 2016.  My previous post on this question reported the distribution (16% said luck in 1939, 8% in 1970, and 13% in 2016), but didn't look at group differences.  In 1939, there were large differences by economic standing:                                         Luck     AbilityWealthy                           3%          97%Average +                       7%           93%Average                         11%          89%Poor+                             17%          83%Poor                                23%         77%On relief                         30%         70%Unfortunately, the individual data for the 2016 survey is not available in the Roper Center or ICPSR--I will try to track it down, although I think the odds are against me.[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

Readers will be aware of the philosophy journal poll I have been hosting here. The poll was comprehensive in that it covered over 140 philosophy journals, most of them suggestions by readers. These journals cover the full spectrum of the discipline. There have been more than 36,000 votes cast already and I believe we can draw some initial findings. Journals are each assigned a score: this is the percent (%) chance that voters will select this journal as their favourite if asked to choose between this journal and a second journal chosen at random.

The first finding is that there appears to be a top tier of philosophy journals -- this is not controversial -- that is relatively small -- this latter part may be more controversial.

From the poll, the top tier of philosophy journals appears to consist of the following publications:

1. Journal of Philosophy 87

2. Philosophical Review 84
3. Philosophy & Phenomenological Research 83
3. Nous 83 
5. Mind 82 
6. Ethics 80

I say that these appear to be the top tier as each were no. 1 or 2 at some point during the voting (unlike other journals). Each would be selected at least 80% of the time if paired with a second journal chosen at random.

A further finding is that the second tier of journals -- which we might classify as chosen at least 60-79% of the time when paired with a second journal chosen at random -- is perhaps surprsingly large. This second tier might consist of the following journals:

7. Philosophical Studies 79
8. Synthese 77
8. Philosophy & Public Affairs 77
10. Analysis 76
10. Philosophical Quarterly 76
10. American Philosophical Quarterly 76
10. Philosophers' Imprint 76
10. Monist 76
10. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 76
16. Journal of the History of Philosophy 75
16. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 75
16. Midwest Studies in Philosophy 75
16. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 75
20. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 74
21. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 73
21. European Journal of Philosophy 73
23. Erkenntnis 72
24. Philosophy of Science 71
25. Philosophy 70
25. History of Philosophy Quarterly 70
25. Ratio 70
28. Journal of Moral Philosophy 69
29. Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 68
30. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 67
31. Philosophical Papers 67
32. Journal of Philosophical Logic 67
33. Journal of Philosophical Research 66
33. British Journal for the History of Philosophy 66
33. Utilitas 66
33. Mind and Language 66
33. Journal of Ethics 66
38. Southern Journal of Philosophy 65
39. Review of Metaphysics 64
39. Philosophical Investigations 64
39. Kant-Studien 64
42. Metaphilosophy 62
42. Philosophy Compass 62
42. Journal of Political Philosophy 62
42. Philosophical Topics 62
42. Philosophia 62
47. Hume Studies 61
47. Linguistics and Philosophy 61
49. Journal of Ethics & Social Philosophy 60

The next third tier of journals are those chosen about 50% of the time (from 40-60%)  where paired with a second journal chosen at random:

50. Phronesis 59 
51. Journal of the History of Ideas 58

51. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 58
53. Ethical Theory & Moral Practice 57
53. Philosophical Forum 57
53. Inquiry 57
56. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 56
57. Political Theory 55
57. Social Theory & Practice 55
57. Philosophical Explorations 55
57. Journal of Social Philosophy 55
57. Economics & Philosophy 55
62. Law & Philosophy 54
62. dialectica 54
62. Public Affairs Quarterly 54
62. Acta Analytica 54
66. Social Philosophy & Policy 53
66. Theoria 53
66. Journal of Applied Philosophy 53
69. Faith and Philosophy 52
70. Political Studies 51
71. Journal of Value Inquiry 51
72. Harvard Law Review 50
73. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 49
73. Philosophy & Public Policy Quarterly 49
73. Philosophical Psychology 49
76. Bioethics 48
76. International Journal of Philosophical Studies 48
78. Politics, Philosophy, Economics 47
78. Kantian Studies 47
79. History of Political Thought 44
80. Legal Theory 43
81. Hypatia 42
82. Philosophical Writings 41
82. southwest philosophy review 41
84. Apeiron 40
84. European Journal of Political Theory 40
84. American Journal of Bioethics 40

The remaining results for other journals are as follows:

87. Environmental Ethics 39
87. Logique et Analyse 39
87. Philosophy Today 39
90. Ratio Juris 38
90. Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 38
90. Business Ethics Quarterly 38
93. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 37
93. Ethical Perspectives 37
93. Public Reason 37
96. Hegel-Studien 36
97. Philosophy & Social Criticism 35
97. Res Publica 35
97. Philosophy in Review 35
97. Philo 35

101. Neuroethics 34
101. Ethics and Justice 34
103. Philosophy and Theology 33
104. International Journal of Applied Philosophy 32
105. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 32
106. Review of Politics 31
106. Jurisprudence 31
106. Research in Phenomenology 31
109. Journal of Philosophy of Education 30
109. Review Journal of Political Philosophy 30
109. Philosophy East and West 30
112. South African Journal of Philosophy 29
112. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 29
114. Teaching Philosophy 28
114. Review Journal of Philosophy & Social Science 28
114. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 28
117. Journal of Global Ethics 27
117. APA Newsletters 27
119. Transactions of the C. S. Peirce Society 26
120. Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain 25
121. Adam Smith Review 23
121. Archiv fur Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie 23
121. Imprints: Egalitarian Theory and Practice 23
124, Theory and Research in Education 22
125. Polish Journal of Philosophy 21
125. Epoche 21
125. Fichte Studien 21
125. Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy 21
125. Asian Philosophy 21
130. Think 20
131. Archives de Philosophie du Droit 18
131. Collingwood & British Idealism Studies 18
131. Owl of Minerva 18
131. New Criminal Law Review 18
135. Journal of Indian Philosophy 17
136. Continental Philosophy Review 17
136. The European Legacy 17
138. Education, Citizenship, and Social Justice 15
139. Reason Papers 14
139. Associations 14
139. Journal of Indian Philosophy and Religion 14
142. Studia Philosophica Estonica 13
143. Derrida Today 5

Some further reflections. While there are several exceptions, it would be interesting to analyze any correlation between the age of a journal and its position in the rankings. There are several surprises on the list, this list does not correspond to my own opinions (I would have ranked many journals differently), and I do not believe that there is much difference between journals ranked closely together.

I also purposively put some selections in to see how they might play out. For example, I added Harvard Law Review out of curiosity and I was surprised to see of all journals exclusively publishing law and legal philosophy journals it appears to come second to the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies and above other choices. (I was surprised legal philosophy journals did not score much better.) I added several journals edited by political scientists, such as Political Studies, and was surprised to see they did not score as highly as I had thought. Roughly speaking, journals with a wider remit performed much better than journals with a more specific audience. I also added at least one journal, Ethics and Justice, that I believe is no longer in print. (Can readers correct me on this? I hope I am in error.) It scored 34% and came in at 101st.

What I will do shortly is create a new poll that will only have the top 50 philosophy journals from this poll roughly speaking. Expect to see this new link widely advertised shortly.

In the meantime, what do readers think we can take away from the results thus far? Have I missed anything?

 1.  My last post observed that in 1970, people with higher incomes were less likely to say that people who are successful get ahead because of luck, but that in 2016 no relationship was visible.  How about education?  In 1970, there was no relationship between education and opinions after you controlled for income.  In 2016, there was:                        LuckNot HS grad     19%HS only            16%Some college    10%College grad     14%Grad educ         16%That is, the middle levels of education were least likely to say that luck was what mattered.  This supports my general point about people at the top becoming less likely to assert their superiority (also see this post).2.  In January, I tried to understand the persistence of Republican support for Donald Trump by comparing it to views of Watergate.  Views on whether Watergate was a "very serious matter" or "just politics" shifted towards "a very serious matter" during the earlier part of the Watergate investigation, but then stabilized.  They were pretty evenly divided in the summer of 1974 (not long before Nixon resigned) and in several later surveys that asked people to look back.  In that post, I said "Of course, Nixon was ineligible to run for President,  but no one said he should remain a major voice in the party and no one sought his endorsement when running for office."  I later found some questions from 1979 that were prefaced "there has been some talk of President Nixon getting back into active political life" and then asked what they thought about several possible ways.  (I don't remember whether there actually was such talk or whether the people doing the survey just thought it was an interesting question).  The percent saying it would be a good idea for him to:                                                              Republicans      Independents     DemocratsRun for office                                          18%                   14%                     7%Be appointed to high post                       14%                   10%                    5%Speak out on issues                                 55%                    33%                   27%Take active role in party                         31%                     19%                   14%About 8 or 9 percent said they weren't sure--that was pretty constant across all the party/question combinations.  So a substantial number of Republicans supported the idea of Nixon taking "an active role in the workings of the Republican party," and some even thought he should run for office.    After Trump's loss, Republican elites seemed to expect their voters to spontaneously turn against him, and then be surprised that he retained substantial popular support (or interpreted it as evidence that he had a unique personal appeal).  This example shows that they shouldn't have been surprised:  Nixon had significant support from Republican voters even after he had acknowledged wrongdoing, resigned, and kept a low profile for several years.  Why was elite behavior different in the two cases?  The most apparent factor is that in the 1970s there was a stronger core of leadership that could speak for the majority of the party in Congress.  But I think that there's also another:  there's now a stronger sense of "team spirit" among both politicians and opinion leaders.  That is, Republicans were reluctant to make common cause with Democrats.  As a result, even those who aren't Trump supporters have promoted the idea that he's being unfairly treated, that Democrats have done similar things in the past or are trying to do them now--e. g. Ross Douthat's indignation about efforts to remove Trump from the ballot ("antidemocratic and incompetent at once, signifying ... a general elite fear of the voting public").  That makes it easier for ordinary Republicans to conclude that it's all "just politics."[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

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Yesterday, the U.S. Senate passed after extensive debate a
bill greenlighting the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. The final vote
was 62-32 in favor, two votes more than the 60 vote threshold required to avoid
a filibuster. The Senate version of the bill will either go back to the House
where they can pass it as is, or the House can request a conference committee to
hash out the differences. If the House goes the conference route, the committee
will produce a report subject to a straight up-down vote in both chambers. In
either case, everyone anticipates that some form of Keystone legislation will
be sent to the president within the next week.









But, it really doesn't matter. Because President Obama has
indicated he will veto any Keystone XL bill, as he believes that Congress is
intruding on his presidential powers by authorizing an infrastructure project
crossing an international boundary. And, as there are not enough votes in either
chamber to override his veto, Keystone XL will be again delayed and remain
unbuilt unless and until Obama gives the project his assent.



The political realities of Keystone did not prevent political
gamesmanship in the wake of the vote here in Montana though. Republicans have
been chomping at the bit to get this legislation passed, giving it the
designation of Senate Bill 1 to signal the importance of the issue. But the legislation
has been debated for weeks now and subject to scores of amendments. To expedite
the bill's passage earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
filed a cloture motion to end debate on the bill and prevent additional
amendments from being considered. As you all know, a cloture motion is used
either to prevent or stop an ongoing filibuster, and if it passes, places
strict limits on further discussion before moving to a vote on final passage.



This cloture motion failed 53 to 39 (again, the motion
needed 60 votes), with Montana Senator Jon Tester voting against cloture. Montana's
freshman senator, Steve Daines, supported McConnell and voted to end debate. 






 (Caption: Montana's congressional delegation, presumably before the vote on Keystone XL)




 Freshman Congressman Ryan Zinke immediately took the
opportunity to blast Tester. "To me, a vote against the Keystone is a vote
against Montana," he said. "I'm a proud co-sponsor of the House bill to build
the Keystone XL Pipeline because it is proven to be safe and in the best interest
of Montana. I will always put Montana before raising money from special
interests in Washington, D.C." (Full story here).



Zinke implied, of course, that Tester's a flip-flopper
and in the pocket of special interests—special interests that are opposed to
the construction of Keystone and the production of good paying Montana jobs.



Yesterday's press release from Montana's State Republican Party
was much more hyperbolic than Zinke's statement. Here is what they sent via
e-mail to those subscribing to their list:

"Last November,
Tester voted to build the
Keystone XL pipeline.
On Monday, Tester joined Senator Democrats' delay tactics and voted against the
Keystone XL pipeline. 

Tester claimed he wanted more amendments and debate but last
November- when Tester voted for the Keystone XL pipeline- there were no
amendments allowed and just 6 hours of
debate. 
Under the
Republican-led Senate, there have already been "more amendment votes than in all of 2014 under Democratic
control" on the Keystone bill alone.  And,
the Senate has spent 3 weeks debating the bill. 


On Wednesday, Tester voted to support President Obama's latest land power grab, allowing Obama to
declare land in Phillips County a national monument and immediately halt
construction of the Keystone XL pipeline."



Both Congressman Zinke and the Montana Republican Party, in
their eagerness to score political points, are pushing a narrative spun of
cynicism and obfuscation instead of an honest consideration of the facts. And
this, I find as a political scientist, quite disturbing. 



Let's consider reality for a moment.



Tester supports construction of Keystone XL, but with some
qualifications, and as he has since the project was proposed. I spoke with him
about Keystone XL and energy development in the Bakken on Veteran's Day in 2011
as we flew between Billings and Helena—an interview I conducted as part of the
research for my book, Battle
for the Big Sky. Here is the transcript verbatim:



David:                  Do you have any problems
with more development in the Balkan?

Sen. Tester:          No. 


David:                  No?

Sen. Tester:          No. 
As long as it's done right.  It's
kind of like the Keystone pipeline, as long as it's done right, you can do
it.  Now, I'm going to tell you
what.  There's a lot of times that this
stuff isn't done right and taxpayers for generations and generations to come
have to fix the problem.  Take a look at
a lot of the abandoned mines around. 
Yeah, they create a bunch of jobs and then when they left, it becomes a
Superfund site the taxpayers have to pick up. 
That isn't a false choice.  That
should have been -- the rules should have been dictated early and that's what
I'm saying is make sure we get the playing field established so that it is done
right so that it isn't a false choice.

David:                Are you confident with the
rules and regulations in place now that the Bakken can be drilled safely?

Sen. Tester:          Yeah. 


David:                Well then let me ask the
follow-up question to that.  If we sit
and put our eggs in the Bakken basket, don't we risk basically having Butte
part 2 over again?  All this development
happens, big towns happen, oil's gone, it collapses.  How do we, as a state, look beyond that?

Sen. Tester:          I don't know that I say we put all our
eggs in the Bakken basket.  I think we've
got incredible opportunities in wind and solar and renewable energies across
the board, but we also need to do right because they can be done wrong, but do
those right and expand upon those.  I
think the Bakken [play], if that's all we're going to look at for energy
future, big mistake, big mistake.  I
think if we developed the Balkan right, there are going to jobs there for many,
many years and there can be a level of energy security there for many, many years. 

David:                      But what about the environmentalist
movement?  There's a number of folks that
are really opposed to the pipeline, opposed to drilling the Bakken and
ostensibly those people are going to be people who are probably going to want
to vote for you and not Denny Rehberg [Tester's opponent in 2012], isn't there
a risk that they're not going to show up and turn out to help you?

Sen. Tester:          I always think common sense is going
to be the deciding factor when it comes to elections and I think, if you
develop in a common sense way, everybody can win.  That's the basis of my Forest Jobs bill.  And there's going to be people on the hard
right and the hard left that want it all their way, but that's not practical
and it's not common sense.  So you've got
to be thoughtful about it.  You've got to
make sure you do it right.  You've got to
make sure that folks follow the rules.

                              And if agency
folks don't follow the rules, by the way, I don't care if you're talking about
benefits for veterans or you're talking about drilling in the Bakken or
whatever, that's an important part of the equation.  So but no, I think enviros in the end can
take a look at what I stand for.  You
know, it is a good choice, it is a clear choice for them because you've got, on
the one hand, the guy [Rehberg] who built the Keystone pipeline, come hell or
high water and I'm saying let's use our heads about this.  Let's do it right if we're going to do
it.  And the same thing with drilling in
the Balkan, let's do it right. 

I searched Tester's Senate press releases, available on his
Senate website, for the term "Keystone XL" to further understand his position
on Keystone XL.  The first mention of the
project came in 2010, when Tester questioned TransCanada's request to operate
the proposed pipeline at a higher than standard pressure—a request which TransCanada
withdrew at Tester's urging. The press release aptly portrays Tester's position
on Keystone XL: He wants it built, but with certain restrictions. Completely in
step, mind you, with what he told me in fall of 2011 more than a year later.



That's the same pattern you see when reviewing Tester's
votes on amendments to Senate Bill 1. Tester supported some amendments mandating
that the pipeline to be built with American material and labor. He voted for an
amendment clarifying that products produced from tar sands would be subject to
federal petroleum excise taxes. He supported an amendment requiring a renewable
standard for electricity production. He opposed an amendment requiring the
federal home heating assistance program to be funded at a minimum level, and
another restricting the transportation of petroleum coke. 



Most of these amendments, including those Tester favored,
failed. And despite the fact Tester has long supported amendments requiring the
use of American labor and material in the construction of Keystone XL, he
supported the bill on final passage. To be clear, Tester did not get his ideal
Keystone XL bill. But he voted for it anyway—figuring, I suspect, that half a
loaf was better than none.

You can see all the roll call votes on the Senate website here.



So, where's the alleged flip flop? As far as I can tell, in
my review of previous pieces of legislation and Senate amendments concerning
Keystone XL going back to 2011, Tester has always supported the construction of
Keystone XL.



The "flip flop" is because Tester did not vote in favor of
cutting off debate on Senate Bill 1 says the Montana Republican Party. He's not
a Keystone XL "purist" because he favored more debate and more amendments.



Well, a funny thing happens when a party moves from the
minority to the majority. Because all of the sudden, positions the party once
took become, shall we say, inconvenient. 



When Republicans served in the Senate minority in the last
Congress, they expressed indignity when Senator Reid did not allow them the
courtesy of considering Republican amendments to Democratic-crafted bills. Democrats
did not allow the amendment process to run its full course, they said, and they
felt debate was rushed and did not consider the minority party's point of view.



Here's Republican Senator Orrin Hatch in a National Journal piece on Harry Reid's
ironclad control over the Senate floor agenda, achieved by filling the
amendment tree (thereby shutting out the minority party in the amending of
legislation): "When the Senate Democratic leadership decides to bring a
bill to the floor, far more often than not we are blocked from offering any
amendments," Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said on the floor last week." You
can access the article here.
Republicans, of course, vowed to allow more amendments and greater debate if
only voters gave them a majority in the Senate.



Majority status means majority control, and it often means
that in order to get things done, you have to shut down debate and control what
can and cannot be discussed. It also means limiting the amending process. I'll
bet you good money that we'll see far less amend-a-thons on future bills in the Republican-led
Senate. The Republicans, while in the minority, doth protest too much.



On this point, the Republican Party's press release was disingenuous.
But what followed next was either disturbing or laughable. Take your pick.



One of the amendments voted upon by the Senate AFTER cloture
failed was Senator Steve Daines' Senate Amendment 132, which expressed the
"sense of Congress" that restrictions should be placed on the president's
ability to create National Monuments. You can read the text of the amendment here.



Tester voted no on that amendment—a vote which he never
would have taken had the cloture petition succeeded—the same cloture petition
that Tester was criticized for voting against in the same press release! 



So Tester's faulted for voting against cloture, and then he
is criticized for endorsing "President Obama's latest land power grab, allowing Obama
to declare land in Phillips County a national monument and immediately halt
construction of the Keystone XL pipeline." At least, that's what is
spun in the press release. Don't believe it.



Facts are stubborn things. Had Daines' amendment passed, it
would have done nothing to change existing statute.



There is no land grab in Phillips County—and even if there
was or is, Senator Tester's vote on Senate Amendment 132 certainly didn't
express his views on it. At best, Tester voting no suggests that he believes
that the executive branch has and should have the power to protect land by
declaring it a national monument under the Antiquities Act. Every president
since has created at least one National Monument—including Gerald Ford and
Ronald Reagan. It does not mean he wants President Obama to drop a national
monument in Phillips County and stop Keystone XL because HE WANTS KEYSTONE XL
BUILT.



The process of legislating is messy, tortuous, and
complicated. To truly understand it requires taking each and every vote and
placing it into its proper context. To do otherwise represents a gross
distortion of the how the Senate and House operate, and at its core, represents
elevating a politically-driven narrative at the expense of what Stephen Colbert
termed as "truthiness." 



Perhaps more importantly, no piece of legislation is
perfect. To expect our legislators to vote for the perfect bill asks the
impossible. No legislator can or should be held to that standard. But the way
in which political operatives abuse roll call records, they aim to make us think
there is only one way—the true way—to represent a political position and the
interests of a place or a people. Everything else is craven and suspect. I
fundamentally object to this standard, and to this particular misrepresentation
of legislating. We ought to expect better of civic discussion and discourse.



One final point. Using the logic of the Montana Republican
Party as expressed in their press release, I guess Senator Mitch McConnell
hates Keystone, too, because he voted against his own cloture motion! He
flip-flopped!



Don't believe me? Go look it up here. 



No, of course not. He voted against it as a procedural
matter so that he could later introduce a possible motion to reconsider on the
bill. But hey, context doesn't matter, right?

 A couple of weeks ago, the New York Times had a piece on the upcoming election that said "Red and Blue Americas are moving farther and farther apart geographically, philosophically, financially, educationally and informationally."  It went on to say "In 1960, about 4 percent of Americans said they would be displeased if their child married someone from the other party. By 2020, that had grown to nearly four in 10. Indeed, only about 4 percent of all marriages today are between a Republican and a Democrat."  I already wrote about the last point.  I think it refers to perceived voting differences from one's spouse (there aren't many political surveys which interview both members of a couple):  they are rare today, but were also rare in the previous years for which I had data (1944, 1960, and 1984).  This post will consider the hypothetical question about a child marrying someone from the other party.  This is a summary of all the relevant questions I could find:Year                       Positive               Negative             Survey

1960                     14%                       4%                         Almond/Verba
2008                                                     24%                     YouGov               
2010                                                     41%                     YouGov
2014                     28%                       17%                       Pew
2017                                                     14%                      PRRI
2018                     69%                       35%                       PRRI     
2020                                                     38%                      YouGovThe three figures in boldface involve the same question:  the others all had different questions and different response categories.  Some of the surveys just asked one question about marrying someone from the other party, but others asked everyone two questions--one about marrying a Republican and one about marrying a Democrat.  For the ones with two questions, I also show positive responses--people who say they would be pleased if the hypothetical child marries in the party (rather than saying it wouldn't matter to them).  There's clearly been an increase in both positive and negative reactions, although the differences among the questions makes it hard to say much about its exact timing (I wish people had stuck with the 1960 question).Why do we have stability with (perceived) party differences within actual marriages but increasingly negative reactions to party differences in a hypothetical marriage?  People generally know something about their spouse's political views (although there's undoubtedly a tendency to exaggerate agreement).  But with the hypothetical question, they have to come up with an idea of what an unspecified Democrat or Republican would be like.  The most likely source for that would be prominent Democratic or Republican political leaders.  In a time when ideological differences between parties were small and political leaders tried to show respect for the other side, that wouldn't seem so bad.  But with larger differences and more conflict between the parties, it would.  That is, increased objections to a hypothetical marriage to someone from the other party don't necessarily reflect increased social distance between Democrats and Republicans in the public--they could just reflect increased differences at the elite level.[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]