The polarization in today’s Congress has roots that go back decades
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
It’s become commonplace among observers of U.S. politics to decry partisan polarization in Congress . Indeed, a Pew Research Center analysis finds that, on average, Democrats and Republicans are farther apart ideologically today than at any time in the past 50 years.
But the dynamics behind today’s congressional polarization have been long in the making. The analysis of members’ ideological scores finds that the current standoff between Democrats and Republicans is the result of several overlapping trends that have been playing themselves out – and sometimes reinforcing each other – for decades.
- Both parties have grown more ideologically cohesive. There are now only about two dozen moderate Democrats and Republicans left on Capitol Hill, versus more than 160 in 1971-72.
- Both parties have moved further away from the ideological center since the early 1970s. Democrats on average have become somewhat more liberal, while Republicans on average have become much more conservative.
- The geographic and demographic makeup of both congressional parties has changed dramatically. Nearly half of House Republicans now come from Southern states, while nearly half of House Democrats are Black, Hispanic or Asian/Pacific Islander.
The Center’s analysis is based on DW-NOMINATE , a method that uses lawmakers’ roll-call votes to place them in a two-dimensional ideological space. It is designed to produce scores that are comparable across time. This analysis focuses on the first dimension, which is essentially the economic and governmental aspects of the familiar left-right spectrum and ranges from 1 (most conservative) to -1 (most liberal). (For more details on DW-NOMINATE and this analysis’ geographical definitions, read “How we did this.”)
Between the 92nd Congress of 1971-72 and the current 117th Congress, both parties in both the House and the Senate have shifted further away from the center, but Republicans more so. House Democrats, for example, moved from about -0.31 to -0.38, meaning that over time they’ve become modestly more liberal on average. House Republicans, by contrast, moved from 0.25 to nearly 0.51, a much bigger increase in the conservative direction.
As Democrats have grown more liberal over time and Republicans much more conservative, the “middle” – where moderate-to-liberal Republicans could sometimes find common ground with moderate-to-conservative Democrats on contentious issues – has vanished.
Five decades ago, 144 House Republicans were less conservative than the most conservative Democrat, and 52 House Democrats were less liberal than the most liberal Republican, according to the analysis. But that zone of ideological overlap began to shrink, as conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans – increasingly out of step with their caucuses and their constituents – either retired, lost reelection bids or, in a few cases, switched parties.
Since 2002, when Republican Rep. Constance Morella of Maryland was defeated for reelection and GOP Rep. Benjamin Gilman of New York retired, there’s been no overlap at all between the least liberal Democrats and the least conservative Republicans in the House. In the Senate, the end of overlap came in 2004, when Democrat Zell Miller of Georgia retired.
Ever since, the gaps between the least conservative Republicans and least liberal Democrats in both the House and Senate have widened – making it ever less likely that there’s any common ground to find.
The ideological shifts in the congressional parties have occurred alongside – and, perhaps to some extent, because of – geographic and demographic shifts in their composition.
In 1971-72, representatives from the 11 former Confederate states made up nearly a third (31.4%) of all the House Democrats who served in that Congress. Those Southern representatives were notably less liberal than Democrats from elsewhere in the country: Their average DW-NOMINATE score was -0.144, versus -0.388 for non-Southern House Democrats.
Over time, though, Southern Democrats became both fewer in number and more liberal – to the point where today, they account for only 22% of the House Democratic caucus, but ideologically are almost indistinguishable from their non-Southern colleagues (average scores of -0.383 and -0.381, respectively).
On the Republican side of the aisle, almost the exact opposite trend has occurred. Southerners made up less than 15% of the House GOP caucus 50 years ago but comprise about 42% of it today. And while Republicans in general have become more conservative, that’s been especially true of Southern Republicans in the House: Their DW-NOMINATE score has moved from about 0.29 (only slightly to the right of non-Southern Republicans) in 1971-72 to 0.57 in the current Congress, versus about 0.46 today for non-Southern House Republicans. (These trends are similar in the Senate, although only four of the 22 senators from former Confederate states are currently Democrats.)
The racial and ethnic makeup of both parties’ Southern lawmakers has changed considerably. In 1971-72, according to House records , only 12 African Americans served in the House and one in the Senate, and none were from the South. Of the five Hispanics in the House, two were from Texas (the lone Hispanic senator was from New Mexico). And the only Asian Americans or Pacific Islanders in Congress were Hawaii’s two senators (one Democrat, one Republican) and two representatives (both Democrats).
In the current Congress, 24 of the 50 House Democrats from the South are African American; seven are Hispanic; and two are Asian Americans or Pacific Islanders. (Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia is of both African American and Filipino descent.) One of the four Democratic senators from the South (Raphael Warnock of Georgia) is African American. In contrast, only one of the 91 Southern House Republicans is Black (Byron Donalds of Florida); four others are Hispanic. One of the GOP’s 18 Southern senators is Black (Tim Scott of South Carolina) and two are Hispanic (Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida).
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Hands up all of you who know this.
Please don't forget to count backwards and to snap your fingers.
Seriously...I did not know this. I knew that 50 years ago Southern Democrats were very conservative and are now today's core of the GOP
like 20+ decades...
Even my frozen goldfish isn't that old.
It’s an interesting analysis, and I agree with the assessment of the way Congress appears, but I’m not sure the analysis is based on the right measurement. For one thing, it’s based on votes. I.e.:
This doesn’t necessarily tells us anything about ideology. More than ever, members vote with their party and against the opposition without any actual thought. I suspect that the division in Congress is more about political tribalism than it is about ideology.
With every passing year, the members in each party vote more with their party and against the other party, regardless of what they’re voting on. We have had multiple instances in the last several years of Republicans voting against something they previously supported because it was Democrats who were proposing it this time around. And we have seen Democrats make the same kind of flip flops.
We see it in the general population, too. For entertainment purposes (or for political punditry) we have seen person-on-the-street interviews where the interviewer presents quotes or ideas to citizens, lying to them about the source. For example, they will offer a quote supposedly from Trump to someone who appears to be an Obama or Biden supporter. Inevitably, the subject condemns the quote or proposal and then . . . Gotcha! Just kidding! That was actually something Obama said. Ha Ha Ha!
But the fact that this works repeatedly, shows how the tribalism infects not just Congress, but the general population, as well.