The Impact of Party and Ideology on Roll Call Voting in State Legislatures

Abstract: In order to assess the relative impact of party and ideology on legislative behavior, this analysis utilizes survey-based measures of legislator ideology to examine voting in five state legislatures. The results suggest while both party and ideology influence voting, the impact of party is greater although the magnitude of this impact varies from chamber to chamber. The activity of parties in the electoral arena explains part of this variance, with more active parties having more influence. Thus, research on legislative behavior should focus on the context surrounding the decision making process in order to understand the influences on voting. In attempting to understand how public policies are formulated, there has been much focus on the nature of decision making in legislatures and on understanding the influences on elected officials ’ roll call decisions. Many of the studies examine the impact of political parties and the personal beliefs of legislators. There is much debate over which of these two factors is more important, though. The lack of consistency in the findings surrounding legislative decision making stems largely from the mismeasurement of legislator ideology. The key problem is that direct, independent measures o