Does Legislative Polarization Harm Representation?
Chris Warshaw, Fifth Year Graduate Student, Stanford University
Congress has become steadily more polarized in recent years. But there remains broad disagreement about whether polarization has harmed democratic representation in Congress. This study moves beyond previous work by comparing legislators’ votes on 36 salient roll call votes from the 108-111th Congresses directly to public opinion on those issues. I use national-level surveys and recent advances in opinion estimation to estimate issue-specific public opinion in each state and congressional district. I find that members of Congress are generally responsive to public opinion on individual issues. However, legislators with ideologically extreme roll call records are substantially less responsive than moderate legislators. As a result, these extreme legislators are much less congruent with majority opinion in their constituencies. These findings show that legislative polarization weakens the link between legislators and their constituents. At a broader level, these results contribute to our understanding of democratic representation in the American Congress.