Gay Rights in Congress: Public Opinion and (Mis)Representation

Public majorities have supported several gay rights policies for some time, yet Congress has responded slowly if at all. We address this puzzle through dyadic analysis of the opinion-vote relationship on 23 roll-call votes between 1993 and 2010, matching members of Congress to policy-specific opinion in their state or district. We also extend the MRP opinion estimation technique so that it can be used more often for district-level analysis. While policy-specific opinion is a very strong determinant of roll-call voting, we find large gaps in responsiveness and biases in policymaking. Though opinion strongly influences white male Democrats, black lawmakers and white female Democratic lawmakers generally support gay rights and Repub-licans consistently oppose them, regardless of constituent preferences. We also unpack po-larization over time, showing Democrats moving into and Republicans out of sync with their constituents. This yields a broader, deeper picture of the opinion-vote relationship. 1 Paths to Policy Change Activists often pursue civil rights gains through the courts. High profile cases such as Brown v. Board of Education (school desegregation), United States v. Virginia (male-only admissions poli