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Seeking the Constituent Signal: Exit Poll Measures of Public Opinion and Dynamic Congressional Responsiveness Clifford D University of Connecticut OpenCommons@UConn Doctoral Dissertations University of Connecticut Graduate School 9-6-2016 Seeking the Constituent Signal: Exit Poll Measures of Public Opinion and Dynamic Congressional Responsiveness Clifford D. Vickrey University of Connecticut, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://opencommons.uconn.edu/dissertations Recommended Citation Vickrey, Clifford D., "Seeking the Constituent Signal: Exit Poll Measures of Public Opinion and Dynamic Congressional Responsiveness" (2016). Doctoral Dissertations. 1258. https://opencommons.uconn.edu/dissertations/1258 Seeking the Constituent Signal: Exit Poll Measures of Public Opinion and Dynamic Congressional Responsiveness Clifford David Vickrey, PhD University of Connecticut, 2016 Do American political institutions comport with accepted norms of democratic representation? The three arguably most important American political scientists of the 20th century—Harold Lasswell, V.O. Key, and Robert Dahl—each held that if policymaking does not generally respond to the policy attitudes of constituents, then democracy in America is a fiction. The institutional design of the House of Representatives, which emphasizes frequent elections and small constituencies, makes it a likely locus of responsiveness in our political system. However, the vast literature investigating House responsiveness has failed to provide unambiguous answers about the phenomenon’s nature and extent. One reason for this is a data problem: measuring the constituency half of the constituent-representative dyad is difficult in the absence of large-n, geographically comprehensive social surveys of House district attitudes. Scholars have relied on survey disaggregation and proxy variables as substitutes, but these respectively proved unreliable and invalid. Multilevel regression and post-stratification (MRP), which calculates the attitudinal propensities of demographic groups in national surveys and adjusts these propensities by their demographic composition per jurisdiction, is a new and promising method for imputing district- level attitudes. A new generation of MRP responsiveness literature claims to, at last, precisely measure the attitudinal signals constituents are sending to legislators. I nonetheless take issue with three features of conventional MRP measures: they are cross-sectional (and assume public opinion is stable); they are derived from the general population (and not voters); and they are issue-focused (which poses problems when the issue agenda is unstable). In response, I generate longitudinal MRP measures of ideology using state and national exit polls from 2004 to 2010. Exit polls have Clifford David Vickrey – University of Connecticut, 2016 larger biennial ns than widely-used social surveys like the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, and sample only voters. Employing my measures, I find evidence of heterogeneous ideological change and growing polarization in the districts. I also find that candidates and legislators do not respond to the preferences of median voters. Instead, and in violation of conventional democratic theory, they respond primarily to their party subconstituencies, particularly when district attitudes are widely dispersed. I offer directional voting as a formal explanation for this behavior. Seeking the Constituent Signal: Exit Poll Measures of Public Opinion and Dynamic Congressional Responsiveness Clifford Vickrey B.A., Colby College, 2010 M.A., University of Connecticut, 2012 A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut 2016 i Copyright by Clifford Vickrey 2016 ii APPROVAL PAGE Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation Seeking the Constituent Signal: Exit Poll Measures of Public Opinion and Dynamic Congressional Responsiveness Presented by Clifford David Vickrey, B.A., M.A. Major Advisor ___________________________________________________________________ Samuel J. Best Associate Advisor ___________________________________________________________________ Jeffrey W. Ladewig Associate Advisor ___________________________________________________________________ Lyle A. Scruggs University of Connecticut 2016 iii Acknowledgements I entered UConn as a philosophy student who knew nothing about either American Political Science or quantitative methods and was proud of my ignorance. I leave as an Americanist whose dissertation tackles some of the most vexing methodological problems in the discipline today. I credit my primary advisor and valued friend, Dr. Sam Best, for showing me the value and inherent interest in the subject matter, and for helping me achieve the intellectual clarity and rigor necessary to see my research project through. I also acknowledge Dr. Jeff Ladewig for bringing my once- dilettantish understanding of Congress and spatial politics up to a scholarly level, Dr. Lyle Scruggs for getting me to explain my methodology in the clearest prose of which I am capable, and Drs. Vin Moscardelli and Kristin Kelly for generously agreeing to be readers with short notice. I thank my first advisor, Dr. Michael Morrell, for kindly introducing me to UConn in 2010. The biggest impetuses for my dissertation’s completion, it must be said, have been the encouragement of my wonderful parents, the love and affection of Lindsay Larsen, and my dread of that most well- intentioned of questions, “when are you going to finish?” iv Contents Chapter 1. The Search for Representation ...................................................................................... 1 The Puzzle of Responsiveness .................................................................................................... 1 Signal Versus Noise .................................................................................................................... 6 Exit Polls: A New Place to Look ................................................................................................ 9 Organization of This Manuscript .............................................................................................. 10 Chapter 2. Measuring District-Level Ideology ............................................................................. 13 The Problem .............................................................................................................................. 13 Survey Disaggregation .............................................................................................................. 14 Alternatives to Direct Measurement ......................................................................................... 16 Simulations ............................................................................................................................... 19 The MRP Revolution ................................................................................................................ 21 Bringing Voters Back In ........................................................................................................... 25 The Misplaced Assumption of Stability ................................................................................... 33 The Case for Symbolic Ideology .............................................................................................. 35 Moving Ahead .......................................................................................................................... 37 Chapter 3. Disaggregating the Exit Polls ...................................................................................... 38 A New Approach ...................................................................................................................... 38 Why Exit Polls Matter .............................................................................................................. 39 The Disadvantages of Exit Polls ............................................................................................... 43 The Model ................................................................................................................................. 46 The Results................................................................................................................................ 56 A Methodological Advance ...................................................................................................... 61 Chapter 4: District Ideology from a Temporal Perspective .......................................................... 63 Do Constituencies Change Their Minds? ................................................................................. 63 Theoretical Expectations ........................................................................................................... 63 An Empirical Model of Change ................................................................................................ 70 Explaining Change: A First-Difference Approach ................................................................... 83 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 92 Chapter 5. The Elusive Median Voter .......................................................................................... 94 Full Circle ................................................................................................................................. 94 Responsiveness: A Primer .......................................................................................................
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