IDEOLOGY and PARTISANSHIP in the 87Th (2021) REGULAR SESSION of the TEXAS LEGISLATURE
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IDEOLOGY AND PARTISANSHIP IN THE 87th (2021) REGULAR SESSION OF THE TEXAS LEGISLATURE Mark P. Jones, Ph.D. Fellow in Political Science, Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy July 2021 © 2021 Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy This material may be quoted or reproduced without prior permission, provided appropriate credit is given to the author and the Baker Institute for Public Policy. Wherever feasible, papers are reviewed by outside experts before they are released. However, the research and views expressed in this paper are those of the individual researcher(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Baker Institute. Mark P. Jones, Ph.D. “Ideology and Partisanship in the 87th (2021) Regular Session of the Texas Legislature” https://doi.org/10.25613/HP57-BF70 Ideology and Partisanship in the 87th (2021) Regular Session of the Texas Legislature Executive Summary This report utilizes roll call vote data to improve our understanding of the ideological and partisan dynamics of the Texas Legislature’s 87th regular session. The first section examines the location of the members of the Texas Senate and of the Texas House on the liberal-conservative dimension along which legislative politics takes place in Austin. In both chambers, every Republican is more conservative than every Democrat and every Democrat is more liberal than every Republican. There does, however, exist substantial ideological diversity within the respective Democratic and Republican delegations in each chamber. The second section explores the extent to which each senator and each representative was on the winning side of the non-lopsided final passage votes (FPVs) on which they voted. In the Senate, the one-third of senators with the highest FPV Win Rates are all Republicans, while the one-third of senators with the lowest FPV Win Rates are all Democrats. In sharp contrast, in the House, the one-third of representatives with the highest FPV Win Rates are split at a three-to-two ratio among Democrats (62%) and Republicans (38%), while the one- third of representatives with the lowest FPV Win Rates are all Republicans. The third section uses the data from the first two sections to examine the relationship between ideology, partisanship, and FPV Win Rates in the Texas Senate and House. The data suggest that a Republican agenda dominated the Texas Senate during the 2021 regular session, with the Republican senators at the ideological center of the GOP Senate Caucus having a FPV Win Rate that was 31% greater than that of the Democrat at the ideological center of the Democratic Senate Caucus. The data reveal a Texas House where a Republican agenda did not dominate to the same degree as in the Senate, despite Republicans holding a majority similar in size to that in the Senate and despite the Speaker of the House, like the Lieutenant Governor who leads the Senate, being a Republican. The median Democrat on the Lib-Con dimension in the House had a FPV Win Rate that was 11% higher than that of the median Republican on the Lib- Con dimension. The final section examines the partisanship of the Texas Senate and House via an analysis of partisan roll rates—the proportion of FPVs where a majority of the respective caucuses’ members were on the losing side. The data reveal one similarity and two differences between the Senate and House. The similarity is that a large majority of the FPVs had a bipartisan consensus (73% in the Senate and 69% in the House), with neither party being rolled. The first difference is that while Senate Republicans were rolled on only 0.3% of the FPVs, House Republicans were rolled on 29.4% of FPVs, almost 100 times more. The second is that Senate Democrats were rolled on 26.4% of FPVs, more than twice the rate for House Democrats (10.4%). 3 Ideology and Partisanship in the 87th (2021) Regular Session of the Texas Legislature Introduction This report utilizes roll call votes cast during the 87th (2021) regular session of the Texas Legislature to better understand the partisan and ideological forces that influenced the legislation that passed and failed to pass between January and May of 2021. The report first examines the position during the 2021 regular session of the Texas senators and representatives on the liberal-conservative dimension that dominates legislative behavior in Austin (as well as Washington, D.C.). It provides the ideological location (the Liberal-Conservative Score, or Lib-Con Score) for every senator in relation to every other senator and the ideological location of every representative in relation to every other representative. The 31-member Texas Senate is examined first, followed by the 150- member Texas House. The report then analyzes the extent to which each senator and each representative was on the winning side of non-lopsided Final Passage Votes (FPVs) in their respective chamber. The higher a legislator’s FPV Win Rate, the more they were in agreement (or at least were not in disagreement) with the legislation that obtained final passage in their chamber during the 2021 legislative session. The report then brings together the Lib-Con Score and the FPV Win Rate data from the preceding two sections to better understand the ideological and partisan balance of power in the Texas Senate and in the Texas House during the 2021 regular session. To do so it employs information about the ideological location (Lib-Con Score) of the median Democrat, median Republican, and median legislator in the chamber to ascertain which partisan and ideological groups experienced the most success in terms of agreeing with the most legislation that passed out of their chamber, and which partisan and ideological groups experienced the least success in terms of disagreeing with the most legislation that passed out of their chamber. A final section moves from an individual-level analysis to a party-level analysis via the study of roll rates in the Texas Senate and in the Texas House. A party is “rolled” on an FPV when a majority of its members casting a vote are on the losing side of the vote. Conversely, a party is not “rolled” on an FPV when a majority of its members casting a vote are on the winning side of the vote. It is possible for no party (Democrat or Republican) to be rolled on a vote, or for one of the two parties to be rolled on a vote. 4 Ideology and Partisanship in the 87th (2021) Regular Session of the Texas Legislature Liberals and Conservatives in the Texas Legislature: 2021 This section locates the Texas senators and representatives on the liberal-conservative dimension along which most activity in the Texas Legislature (and U.S. Congress) now takes place (Poole and Rosenthal 2006, 1997; Voteview 2021). The section begins with a brief discussion of the methodology utilized to determine the ideological location of the legislators in each chamber, followed by an analysis of the Texas Senate and then an analysis of the Texas House of Representatives. Methodology Political scientists have for more than 40 years used roll-call votes cast by members of the U.S. Congress to plot them on the Liberal-Conservative dimension along which most legislative politics now takes place. In this tradition, here I use a Bayesian estimation procedure belonging to the family of methodological approaches that represent political science’s gold standard for roll-call vote analysis (Carroll et al. 2009; Clinton, Jackman, and Rivers 2004). The ranking of the Texas Senate draws on the 898 non-lopsided roll-call votes taken during the 2021 regular session. As with previous rankings conducted in 2019, 2017 (post-special session), 2017 (regular session), 2015, 2013, and 2011, the senators are ranked from most liberal to most conservative based on their Liberal-Conservative Score, with the 95% credible interval (CI) for this point estimate also provided. The ranking of the Texas House members draws on the 1,235 non-lopsided roll-call votes taken during the 2021 regular session. As with previous rankings conducted in 2019, 2017 (post special session), 2017 (post regular session) 2015, 2013, and 2011, the representatives are ranked from most liberal to most conservative based on their Liberal-Conservative Score, with the 95% credible interval (CI) for this point estimate also provided. If two legislators’ CIs overlap, their positions on the ideological spectrum might be statistically equivalent, even if their Lib-Con Scores are different. In no case in 2021 did the CI of a Republican senator overlap with that of a Democratic senator, indicating that in the Texas Senate every Republican is significantly more conservative than every Democrat, and every Democrat is significantly more liberal than every Republican. By the same token, in no case in 2021 did the CI of a House Republican overlap with that of a House Democrat, indicating that in the Texas House every Republican is significantly more conservative than every Democrat, and every Democrat is significantly more liberal than every Republican. Following standard practice (Poole and Rosenthal 2006, 1997), House votes that are lopsided are excluded from the analysis, with “lopsided” being defined as when fewer than 2.5% of representatives are on the losing side of the vote (in most cases, fewer than four). For the Senate, votes are considered lopsided if fewer than two senators are on the losing side of the vote. The Senate and House Lib-Con Scores are not directly comparable. 5 Ideology and Partisanship in the 87th (2021) Regular Session of the Texas Legislature The 2021 Texas Senate, from Left to Right The Texas Senate’s roll-call votes from this year’s regular session make it possible to rank the state’s 31 senators from left to right on the state’s ideological spectrum (see Figure 1).