Public Opinion and Gay Rights: Do Members of Congress Follow Their Constituents' Preferences? Katherine L. Krimmel Dept. of Political Science, Columbia University
[email protected] Jeffrey R. Lax Dept. of Political Science, Columbia University
[email protected] Justin H. Phillips Dept. of Political Science, Columbia University
[email protected] March 30, 2011 Abstract While gay and lesbian rights have become controversial, high-profile issues in con- temporary American politics, scholars know relatively little about what drives federal policymaking in this area. In this paper, we consider a likely determinant of govern- ment action|public opinion|by investigating the relationship between the roll call votes of members of Congress on gay rights legislation issues and the policy-specific preferences of their constituents. For each state and congressional district, we use national-level surveys and advances in multi-level modeling to estimate the preferences of constituents on bills relating to same-sex marriage, hate crimes, employment non- discrimination, and military service. We then use these estimates to examine the effects of policy-specific opinion on the corresponding roll call votes. In addition to constituent opinion, our models of legislator behavior include variables that capture the partisan identification, ideology, and personal characteristics of individual lawmakers. We can, thus, evaluate the effect of constituent opinion relative to other potential and know de- terminants of roll call votes. Overall, our results will contribute to our understanding of democratic representation, policy responsiveness, and legislative behavior surrounding civil rights issues. 1 Introduction On the same day the nation voted to elect its first African-American president, California voters|who supported Obama over McCain by a wide margin of 61% to 37%|voted to ban gay marriage through Proposition 8.