While the Senate appears to have reached a deal on executive-branch appointments that heads off a showdown over filibuster rules, the fact that the confrontation went as far as it did points up the increasingly polarized state of Congress. From immigration reform to food stamps to student loans, it almost seems as if congressional Republicans and Democrats inhabit different worlds.
In a way, they do. Not only are Republicans and Democrats elected from very different districts with distinct voter bases, but Congress reflects an America that has been growing further and further apart ideologically for decades.
In addition, as The New York Times illustrated recently, red and blue America have very different racial and ethnic makeups. House districts represented by Democrats are collectively just over half white, 16% black and nearly a quarter (22.5%) Hispanic; Republican-represented districts are nearly three-quarters white, 8.5% black and 11.1% Hispanic.
That’s in part because most House districts have been carefully drawn to be as “safe” for Republicans or Democrats as legally possible. Last year, 30 out of 435 House elections were decided by less than 5 percentage points, while 69 percent of incumbents running for re-election won with more than 60% of the vote. The Rothenberg Political Report currently lists just 47 House seats as “in play” for next year’s election; exclude the races where Democrats or Republicans are favored to win, and you’re down to 29.
Ornstein and Mann list the average ideological positions of House and Senate Republicans and Democrats in each Congress since the end of World War II, adopting a scoring procedure developed some three decades ago by Keith Poole of the University of Georgia and Howard Rosenthal of NYU. The Poole-Rosenthal scale, based on members’ voting records, runs from -1 (most liberal) to +1 (most conservative).