03/15/2001

Analysis: Congress now more polarized

By Chuck Raasch and Robert Benincasa, Gannett News Service

WASHINGTON — Since 1992, Congress has not only shifted ideologically to the right, but also become more polarized between Democrats and Republicans. That's the conclusion of a Gannett News Service analysis of the 1992 and 2000 voting ratings of all 535 members of Congress by the liberal Americans for Democratic Action and its counterpart, the
American Conservative Union. Congress' polarization belies a trend in the general population, where a majority generally describe themselves as moderates.

"This is not surprising, that the public is going one way and the people on the Hill have gone into their respective corners," Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, said of GNS' findings.  "And this is a large component of the disconnect between Washington and the rest of the country."

Amy Isaacs of Americans for Democratic Action said the divisions are so stark that voting records soon may become useless.
"All the Democrats are voting one way, and the Republicans are voting the other way," she said.

The GNS analysis shows that Congress shifted significantly to the right beginning with the Republican revolution of 1994, when the party captured control of the House and Senate.  The ADA and ACU, like many other interest groups, annually choose votes important to their supporters and then rate members of Congress on how often they support the organization's positions. A rating of 100 means a member voted for a group's positions 100% of the time.

Between 1992 and 2000, the American Conservative Union's average rating for all members of the House increased from 43 to 51. Over the same period, the Americans for Democratic Action's average House rating fell from 56 to 42.

Forty-three state delegations became more conservative from 1992 to 2000, the analysis shows.

In the Senate, the conservative union's average rating rose from 41 to 56; the liberal group's dropped from 51 to 42. Of the 50 states, 37 saw their senators vote more conservatively in 2000 than in 1992.

The GNS findings are counter to the theme that centrists have been a rising force in Congress. Political scientists have varied
explanations for the increased polarization.  "It has a lot to do with the fact that members of Congress are more connected
to special interest groups and to the political infrastructure than they were 25 years ago," Kohut said. "There is a need to raise money, and you go to the respective power constituencies of both parties. There are not a lot of liberals at the Chamber of Commerce, and there are not a lot of conservatives in the comparable groups on the left."

Jon Bond of Texas A&M University said some of the South's conservative Democrats were replaced by more liberal Democrats as districts were redrawn to elect more blacks. On the right, he said, there has been a disappearance of what was "a fairly sizable block of liberal Republicans, disproportionately from the Northeast and Midwest."

Even so, there are centrist coalitions.

In the House, about three dozen conservative Democrats, called "Blue Dogs," occasionally become players on issues. Moderate Republicans, such as the two dozen or so in the "Tuesday Group," do the same from the right. The Senate has smaller centrist groups, such as the northeastern Republican "Mod Squad." But some say it's not like it was.  "You don't have conservative Democrats any more," said Deputy Senate Majority Leader Don Nickles, R-Okla.

Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., said that Democrats have been forced to the left in order to oppose GOP entrenchment on the right. The parties have moved, too, he said.  "I've been here 28 years, and for the first 10 years I was called an iconoclast,"
Biden said, for supporting things such as deficit reduction or crime reduction, which have become central Democratic ideals.

Bond said the polarization in Congress reflects the nation more than Americans often realize.  Most Americans, he said, "are still not strongly ideological, and if you ask them, they are all fed up with this partisan bickering. But when you look at their policy preferences, we see a divergence out there. So the members of Congress are not completely out of tune with the country in the aggregate."