Last time, I compared Romney-Clinton congressional districts to other Republican-held CDs. I found that while they are unique in many ways, their Congressional Reps are barely more moderate than the average Republican. In this post, I’ll expand on the finding.

Overview

I sourced the DW-Nominate scores for all 435 Congressional Reps from Voteview. These scores estimate the ideological position of all representatives on a liberal to conservative scale. More positive scores indicate greater conservatism.

Below, I plot these scores against the average of Democratic margin in the presidential vote from 2012 and 2016. Republican representatives are shown as red dots, and Democratic representatives as blue dots. I also add best fit lines to the Republican and Democratic populations (which turn out to be almost exactly parallel):

There are a few notable features of this plot:

We see the expected trend that as a district becomes more moderate (as measured by a mean Democratic presidential margin closer to zero), its Congressional representatives become more moderate.

There is an obvious “discontinuity” that occurs between parties. Even the most conservative Democratic is much more liberal than the most liberal Republican.

The level of spread around the line is very different for Democrats vs. Republicans. Especially in moderate districts, we see that virtually every elected Democrat is a “Blue Dog.” And even in more liberal districts, the representative’s ideology closely tracks the mean presidential vote. For Republicans, there is much greater deviation about the best fit line.

for Democrats vs. Republicans. Other things equal, we’d assume that partisan outliers (i.e. Republicans much more conservative their district would predict; or Democrats much more liberal than their district would predict) would occur toward the edges of the chart. The idea being: a Congressperson can afford to be hyper-partisan in a safely red or safely blue seat, as he or she is unlikely to lose to a member of the opposite party. We’d expect fewer such outliers in swing districts, because there should be a realistic chance of losing to a member of the opposite party if the Congressperson doesn’t moderate his or her views. This is a common argument invoked against partisan gerrymandering. Except: this does not hold true for Republicans! Several of the Republican partisan outliers hail from extremely moderate districts.



Who are the ideological outliers?

Below, I add labels for some of the Congresspeople whose voting patterns deviate most from the best fit line.

Among Republicans, we see that Tom Garrett (VA-5), Dave Brat (VA-7), Ted Budd (NC-13), Andy Biggs (AZ-5), and Ed Royce (CA-39) are the most extreme relative to their constituencies. Startlingly, all but Biggs hail from swingy districts where the Democrats lost by less than 10 points on average over the last two presidential elections. Royce, who isn’t seeking reelection, even comes from a Romney-Clinton district, but continues to vote with the hard right.

The only Democrat who appears to be a slight outlier is progressive superstar Pramila Jayapal, the most liberal voter in the entire House. But, as might be expected, she hails from WA-7 in the heart of Seattle, which is the leftmost district on the West Coast outside of San Francisco.

In fairness to the GOP, there are also some representatives — like Chris Smith in NJ-4 and Hal Rogers in KY-5 — who are quite a bit more moderate than presidential vote patterns in their districts would predict. But the overall asymmetry between Democrats and Republicans is quite noticeable.

Can Democrats exploit this?

Below, we provide the list of Republicans in competitive districts (defined as places with average Democratic margin greater than -10% and over the past two election) who are the greatest ideological outliers. We also provide the Cook Political Report rating for the seat.

Incumbent CD Avg. Pres Margin Nominate Score Predicted Nominate Score Cook Rating Garrett, Tom VA-05 -9% 0.99 0.45 Likely R Brat, Dave VA-07 -9% 0.84 0.45 Lean R Budd, Ted NC-13 -8% 0.78 0.44 Lean R Royce, Ed CA-39 2% 0.66 0.41 Lean D (Retired) Amash, Justin MI-03 -8% 0.66 0.45 Safe R Rohrabacher, Dana CA-48 -5% 0.63 0.43 Toss-Up Sessions, Pete TX-32 -7% 0.59 0.44 Lean R Chabot, Steve OH-01 -6% 0.58 0.44 Lean R Yoder, Kevin KS-03 -4% 0.56 0.43 Lean R Blum, Rod IA-01 5% 0.52 0.40 Toss-Up

Unsurprisingly, of the top five on this list, all but Royce are members of the House Freedom Caucus.

What intrigues me about this list is that it is quite dissimilar from the standard list of Democratic targets — the Comstock/Curbelo cohort. And for good reason: despite their ideological extremeness, every representative on this list except for Blum won by more than 10% in 2016 (Blum won by 8%).

Weirder still, this isn’t a list of longterm, entrenched incumbents. Brat, Budd, Garrett, and Amash are all 53 or younger. The longest serving of the four of them is Amash, who has only been in the House since 2011. So it’s not really the case that swing district voters are sleepwalking to the polls and reelecting archconservatives without realizing it.

Will 2018 be any different? With Royce retiring, his seat has become a prime pickup target. Rohrabacher and Blum are both in competitive races. But some of the most extreme folks, like Garrett and Amash, are still heavily favored despite their voting records.

Democrats challenging these incumbents will likely hit them on ACA repeal, which each of them supported. But I have to wonder if there isn’t a more holistic message to hammer home about these folks — that their values are far out of sync with those of their constituencies, and that they are often supporting legislation that their own voters would oppose.

If voters fully understood this, would they send their Congressmen packing? One can only hope.