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articleeee_3.docxTitle: Holy roll calls: religious tradition and voting behavior in the U.S. House *
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Author(s): Chris Fastnow, J. Tobin Grant and Thomas J. Rudolph
Source: Social Science Quarterly. 80.4 (Dec. 1999): p687.
Document Type: Article
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1999 University of Texas at Austin (University of Texas Press) please do not remove this comment, in place to remove the extra space
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Abstract:
Objective. Religion influences political behavior among the masses (Leege and Kellstedt, 1993) and among some political elites (Luker, 1984), but it is not well studied as a component of congressional behavior. The purpose of this research is to see if trends demonstrated in the masses are present in the U.S. House of Representatives over time.
Methods. We use multivariate analysis of roll call voting on the specific issue of abortion as well as the broad ideologically based voting measure ADA in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1959-94.
Results. We find that religious affiliation significantly affects specific and general roll call voting behavior, and that religious groups in Congress differ from one another, both within and across parties. We also find that the influence of religion has changed over time.
Conclusions. The effect of religion on roll call voting is persistent, suggesting that models of legislative decision making that exclude religion are underspecified.
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Introduction
As research into mass political behavior has demonstrated, religious affiliations and beliefs affect a wide variety of political attitudes and activities (see Jelen, 1998, for a review). Yet, despite evidence that religion affects decisions at the mass level, research into congressional voting decisions has, for the most part, ignored the possible effects of religion on vote choice.
This omission is surprising given that there is evidence that religious beliefs and roll call voting are related. Though there has been very little research into religion's effect on congressional voting, there are some exceptions that demonstrate a relationship between the two. These studies either focus on a single year or two, making generalizations difficult, or worse, they employ invalid measures of religion, measures that hide the full impact of religious tradition. Even with these flaws, much of the early literature on Congress did find some relationship between religious affiliation and voting, despite the use of simplistic measures of religion such as Protestant and Catholic (Fenton, 1960; Rieselbach, 1966).
Since then, researchers have shown that religion, when measured more carefully, affects voting. For example, using in-depth interviews with eighty members during the 96th Congress, Benson and Williams (1982) develop a rich religious classification of members of Congress. Because Benson and Williams (1982) have very detailed information on the beliefs and religious orientations of members, they are able to study the relationship between beliefs and votes in ways that are nearly impossible for other researchers. (1) Yet, their analysis of this relationship relies on simple correlations, with no control even for party. Moreover, because their analysis is based on interviews, the number of members included in the study is limited.
This same limitation is faced by Page et al. (1984), who examine the effect of constituency policy preferences on roll call behavior. Using the 1978 National Election Study (NES), Page et al. test for the effect of constituency opinion on members' voting behavior in 108 congressional districts (25 percent of the House). Their models include a simple measure of the member's religious affiliation (Catholic or non-Catholic), which does not withstand controls for district issue positions, though it does have an effect on the abortion issue, a finding mirrored in research since (Cresanthis, Gilbert, and Grimes, 1991; Tatalovich and Schier, 1993).
In a more recent study, Green and Guth (1991) demonstrate that members' votes represent both their own religious affiliation and the religious groups within their districts. Using a finer measure of religious affiliation, Green and Guth demonstrate that religion, either because of personal beliefs or representational concerns, influences voting behavior.
We build off of these studies in three ways. First and most important, we are careful to use the most comprehensive measure of religion available, one that uses the richness of data on denominational affiliation available for each member. Second, we examine voting over a long time span, 1959-94, rather than during a single congress. (2) Finally, we demonstrate religion's impact both on a specific issue and on broad voting patterns. In doing so we hope to add to the literature on religion in Congress (see Fowler and Hertzke, 1995:123-28; Wald, 1997:146-49, for literature reviews) and to the literature on congressional behavior (see Davidson and Oleszek, 1996:261-66, for a review). To date, there is insufficient longitudinal evidence of religion's impact using theoretically valid measures of religion. (3)
Our purpose in this project then is twofold: we hope to add to the theoretical justification for studying religion's impact and we hope to convince other congressional scholars of the practical importance of including religion for complete model specification. To this end, we employ a new data set with comprehensive religious affiliation information, demographic variables, and voting behavior measures of members of Congress from 1959 to 1994. We also present an empirical analysis that supports the hypothesis that religion has an effect independent of party, other demographic characteristics, and district partisanship. We find that religion does affect roll call voting, in part mirroring trends demonstrated in the masses.
Religious Traditions and Voting
Clausen (1973) aptly depicts members of Congress as typical of other politically active citizens. Members think the same way other people think. They decide on votes the same way. Research has also shown that in addition to the influences of party, president, and constituents, congressional vote choice is affected by the members' gender (Berkman and O'Connor, 1993; Thomas, 1991; Vega and Firestone, 1995; Welch, 1985), and race and ethnicity, though the results of these last studies are decidedly mixed (Hero and Tolbert, 1995; Swain, 1993; Welch and Hibbing, 1984). Since religious characteristics, like demographics, affect mass political behavior, some may consider findings on religion's impact on members' votes as clear and obvious, yet religion has regularly been neglected, as were demographics until recently.
Religion and Voting over Time. While we expect that a relationship between religion and congressional voting exists, measuring it over time is problematic. We would prefer to know the precise beliefs of each member, but surveying members for specific beliefs is difficult to do for one year and virtually impossible to do over a long period of time. Even if such interviews could be done, linking specific beliefs to specific votes would be like trying to find the proverbial needle in a legislative haystack. Connecting specific beliefs to particular policy positions is fruitful for a few issues and doctrines (e.g., Guth et al., 1995, on the environment), but it does not provide the best model for studying the connection between religion and particular policy stances, since it requires that the researcher know a priori which religious attitudes correspond to which political attitudes.
Because of the complexity of religious beliefs and practices, the best way to study religion in Congress is to use the denominational affiliation that virtually every member has made public since the 1950s. There have been a handful of researchers who have used similar data in predicting specific votes, but such analysis often categorizes religion into two categories--Catholic and not-Catholic (e.g., Page et al., 1984; Tatalovich and Schier, 1993). (4) Such simple classification schemes ignore the variety of denominations found in the United States. Unfortunately, many of the denominations represented in Congress have only one or two adherents to draw on over the past forty years, so classification by denomination alone does not allow for good analysis or many generalizations.
Green and Guth's (1991) 8-point ordinal scale based on theological "conservatism" is yet another approach to classifying members of Congress. While better than a simple dichotomous measure, an ordinal scale is still flawed because it combines groups from very different faiths into a single continuum. For example, to use an ordinal religious scale, we must be able to determine whether Lutherans are more liberal than Black Protestants and more conservative than Roman Catholics. Religious faith does not fall neatly onto such an interfaith ordinal scale.
A better use of denominational affiliation is to group denominations that share similar worldviews into religious traditions (Kellstedt et al., 1996). Religious traditions share relatively common doctrines, religious practices, histories, and organizational attachments. By correctly classifying people into religious traditions, we are able to move beyond the difficult task of finding which specific religious beliefs correspond to specific political attitudes and to avoid ranking religious groups according to orthodoxy. While not the only means of classifying religious groups (Smith, 1990; Roof and McKinney, 1987), religious tradition allows us to see the effect of religious worldviews on legislative decisions. (5) Of course, no measurement instrument is immune to error. However, the religious tradition classification scheme employed in this study has performed quite reliably in research on mass behavior (Kellstedt et al., 1996).
Based on work at the mass level, we expect religious tradition to affect a member's position on a single, highly salient issue on which many religious groups have taken a stand, namely abortion. Religion presumably has a great impact on abortion opinion (Tatalovich and Schier, 1993), so this is a relatively low threshold for our hypothesis that religion affects roll call voting. We use Adams' (1997) abortion roll call data, a lifetime score for each member who entered Congress between 1973 and 1989, based on the percentage of pro-choice votes cast on all abortion-related roll call votes between 1973 and 1993 (0 percent = most pro-life; 100 percent = most pro-choice). (6) We have also constructed scores for two time periods, pre-1981 and post-1981, to see if religion's impact changed as the political environment changed.
Second, we expect religious tradition to affect the general ideological orientation of members. If religion is truly an important determinant of voting behavior, then it should show up in a general voting scale as well as in the obviously religious single-issue votes. To measure these ideological voting preferences over time, we employ a general measure of roll call voting, ranging from conservative voting (0) to liberal (100), developed by Americans for Democratic Action (ADA). (7) In order to make scales comparable over time, this scale has been modified by Groseclose, Levitt, and Snyder (1999) to account for shifting and stretching scales based on diverse votes. (8) We computed several scores from this measure: annual scores, multiyear means, and lifetime means for each member. These allow us to identify religion's impact over time.
Analysis
Religion and Abortion Voting. The majority of research using religion as an explanation of voting behavior has been on issues where religion's impact makes intuitive sense, particularly on abortion. Previous work on religion and abortion voting has demonstrated that even simplistic measures of religion (e.g., Catholic, not-Catholic) show an independent impact on voting on abortion legislation (Cresanthis, Gilbert, and Grimes, 1991; Tatalovich and Schier, 1993). We expect that more precise measurement of religious tradition will only enhance this relationship.
Denominations and churches within the different traditions have taken official positions on the issue of abortion, and some of those positions have been quite vocal. In particular, Mainline denominations have mostly taken pro-choice stances, while Evangelical, Catholic, and Mormon groups have made very public pro-life statements since the 1970s. Black Protestant denominations tend to be more quietly pro-life. Finally, Jewish organizations have voiced a (mixed) tendency toward the pro-choice position. If religious tradition means anything to members of Congress, we should see voting along the same lines, with Catholics, Mormons, and Evangelicals scoring lower on the abortion vote scale. Black Protestants should also vote pro-life but perhaps less often. We expect the Mainliners and Jews to vote in a more pro-choice manner, though the quiet approaches of their denominations may dampen the effect. We use dummy variables for religious traditions, leaving Mainline Protestant, historically the largest group in Con gress, as the baseline against which to compare the other traditions.
We also include the party, ethnicity, and gender characteristics expected to affect all congressional voting. Constituency preferences may also affect abortion voting; however, because our analysis covers four decades, it is very difficult to gather consistent data on constituent characteristics. We use two measures of constituency that are available for the entire time series. The first is a region dummy. The second is the average vote for the Democratic congressional candidate in each decade. (9) This second measure captures the district's general political preferences. Because our study covers a time when the South was largely represented by conservative Democrats, we include an interaction between average Democratic vote share and Southern district.
Indeed, we see that religion plays a role in members' voting behavior even when accounting for these control variables. The first column of Table 1 presents OLS estimates for the lifetime abortion score. (10) As expected, the coefficients for Mormons, Catholics, and Evangelicals are all negative and significant, suggesting more pro-life votes than their Mainline counterparts, in the case of Catholics, up to 20 percent more pro-life votes. At the other end of the spectrum, we find that both Jews and Black Protestants vote significantly more pro-choice than the Mainline members, with Black Protestants voting 25 percent more pro-choice than Mainliners (and over 35 percent more pro-choice than White Evangelicals). Interestingly, Black Protestants do not follow their fellow church members in the masses, who tend to be much more pro-life, and Catholics in Congress are more pro-life than their brethren in the masses (Wald, 1997:184-85). Indeed, constituency preferences do not have much of an effect on abortion votin g overall. Religious tradition does affect voting on abortion, and with the exception of Black Protestants, religious groups in Congress follow their churches' teachings.
It should be noted that within religious traditions, party does play an important role. Democratic and Republican Catholics, for instance, are 30 points apart in their abortion votes. But it should also be clear that religious tradition plays a role in members' vote choices, even when controlling for party. A Republican Evangelical is considerably more likely to vote pro-life than a Republican Mainliner. And a Democratic Catholic parts company with her Black Protestant co-partisan when abortion is the topic.
Abortion Voting over Time. This effect of religion on abortion voting has not been constant over time. Columns 2 and 3 present models for 1973-80 and 1981-94, respectively. Dividing the data is necessary for two reasons. First, the substance of abortion votes has changed, with most of the votes on abortion prior to 1980 covering funding of abortions by the federal government, while later votes became more polarizing. Second, the effect of religious tradition may have changed after Reagan's presidential campaign in 1980, which courted Evangelical support. Evangelicals in the masses changed partisan affiliation and voting behavior in large numbers between 1980 and today (Fowler and Hertzke, 1995:98-101).
Columns 2 and 3 show that significant differences between the religious traditions were more apparent before 1981 than after. This is seen most dramatically with Evangelicals and Mormons. Though the direction of both coefficients continues to be negative, both traditions are statistically indistinguishable from the Mainline in the 1980s and 1990s. In addition to this statistical change over time, religion has a diminished substantive impact on abortion voting over time among all traditions except that of Evangelicals. This finding is consistent with Adams (1997), who argues that there has been an issue evolution in the area of abortion, with the parties taking distinct stances on the issue and partisans aligning according to the abortion platform. Religious tradition may have lost some direct impact on abortion voting, but it may still be acting indirectly through party affiliation. Overall, we find that religious tradition is an important determinant of abortion voting, but that this direct effect has lessen ed as party has become more important.
Religion and Ideological Voting. Religion not only affects voting on specific issues like abortion but ideological voting more generally. As with our analysis of abortion voting, we begin by testing the effect of religion on voting using a lifetime score for each member that served between 1959 and 1994. We then compare the effect of religion by decade. (11) Because of the traditions' histories and doctrines and the behavior demonstrated by the electorate, we expect Jews, Catholics, and Black Protestants to vote more liberally than Mainline Protestants, while Evangelical Protestants and Mormons should vote more conservatively (for example, Fowler and Hertzke, 1995:83-111).
Table 2 shows the models for adjusted ADA scores. (12) We include the same control variables in this model, adding a variable for the year each member entered the House, to account for any time trend (Groseclose, Levitt, and Snyder 1999). OLS results in the first column of Table 2 strongly support our hypotheses. (13) Not only are the coefficients on religious tradition in the expected directions, but they are all highly significant. Party, as could be expected, soaks up much of the variance in adjusted ADA, as does the support for Democratic candidates in the district; but even when such important variables are included, religion has a significant impact on voting behavior in the House. The overall fit of the model is very good, with 65 percent of the variance in voting scores explained by these variables.
Clearly, other characteristics are important, with Hispanics, women, Easterners, and Democrats voting more liberally than their fellow members, consistent with both conventional wisdom and previous research. As expected, Southerners part company with their colleagues on Democratic representation. Higher support for Democrats in Southern districts yields lower ADA scores, while other districts see increased ADA scores with Democratic support. The House has gotten slightly, but significantly, more liberal each session according to this measure of voting. But even two House members who entered Congress the same year, sharing race, gender, region, and party, are affected by religion. For instance, otherwise identical members from Evangelical and Jewish traditions would be a full twenty points apart in voting. Religious tradition can dramatically affect general ideological voting behavior.
Religion and Ideological Voting over Time. As with abortion voting, the impact of religion over time is largely consistent with this general model but reveals an even more interesting story. The remaining columns of Table 2 present the same model for ideology for the 1959-70, 1971-80, and 1981-94 periods. Some traditions have affected voting in each decade. Members of both the Black Protestant and Jewish traditions are consistently more liberal, with these effects being strongest in the 1970s. On the conservative side, Evangelical Protestants have been consistently to the right of the Mainline. This consistency is somewhat surprising given that most of the popular and academic focus on Evangelicals in politics is much more recent. Although Evangelicals in the masses have mobilized fairly recently into the Republican party, Evangelical members of Congress have been voting conservatively for at least thirty years. They too may be moving toward the GOP, but it is only after a long history of conservative voting, behavior.
Not all traditions remained consistent in effect over time. Until the 1980s, Mormons did not significantly differ from the baseline Mainliners. But by the 1980s, being a Mormon had substantively the strongest conservative impact of any religious tradition in Congress. In stark contrast are Catholics. In the 1960s, Catholics voted significantly more liberally than Mainliners. However, by the 1970s, the impact of being Catholic lost statistical significance. Catholics and Mainline Protestants no longer differ in general ideological voting, once party, district preferences, and other variables are controlled for.
This change in significance suggests why early analyses that distinguished between Catholics and Protestants would yield results, while more recent distinctions seem to be meaningless. Lumping all Protestants together makes that category relatively conservative. When compared to liberal 1960s Catholics, huge differences should appear. But with Catholics becoming less distinct from Mainliners, significant differences across the old categories disappear. The schisms have moved, so our measures of religious differences should also move.
Discussion
Two results flow from these analyses. First, it is possible to measure religion precisely and include it in studies of legislative activity. Second, it is imperative to measure religion properly and include it in studies of legislative activity. Religion has an effect on political behavior, in legislatures and out. Neglecting this effect leads at best to biased results from specification error and at worst, to a misunderstanding of how legislators behave.
Our results not only show that religion affects congressional voting, they also suggest the way religion plays a role in congressional decision making. For some traditions, religion impacts both specific issues and ideological voting more generally. For example, Evangelical Protestants are consistently more pro-life and conservative regardless of the time period examined.
The effect of religion on voting is not the same over time, however. Mormons, for example, have only recently become a distinct group in Congress. Prior to the 1980s, being Mormon had no significant effect on general ideological voting but did impact voting on abortion. In the 1980s this reversed, with Mormons voting as pro-life as other Republicans on abortion and more conservatively overall.
The salience of certain issues to particular religions is even more apparent when we examine Catholic voting. Though Catholics did vote more liberally in the 1960s, since then Catholicism has had little distinct impact on ideological voting. There is good reason to expect this. Catholic social thought does not fall neatly onto the American ideological spectrum (Wald, 1997:267-93). On many issues, such as minimum wage, welfare, and the death penalty, we expect Catholics to take more liberal stances. However, on so-called moral issues, we expect Catholics to take more conservative stances. Finally, Catholic opinions in the masses have changed over time in regard to defense deployment and spending. Thus, it is not surprising that Catholic affiliation has had no independent impact on ADA voting since the 1960s but does affect abortion voting.
Religion stands up to the competition of a variety of other theoretically powerful predictors of voting behavior, including party, constituency preferences, and important demographic indicators. This evidence underscores and expands earlier research that demonstrates religion's impact in a single congress (Benson and Williams, 1982). It is clear that religion does play a role in voting decisions, and that the decisions largely reflect the attitudes and party affiliations of the public at large (Fowler and Hertzke, 1995). As the religious composition of Congress changes over time, so too will the voting behavior of its members.
APPENDIX
Religion and race variables were created by consulting several sources: CQ Almanac, the Congressional Directory, the Almanac of American Politics, and Who's Who in America.
We examine six religious traditions: Roman Catholic, Jewish, Mormon, Evangelical Protestant, Mainline Protestant, and Black Protestant. All remaining traditions and those professing no affiliation are classified as "Other." Defining and classifying Catholic, Jewish, and Mormon members of Congress is fairly straightforward: we follow members' self-identification in all three cases. Of the 1,660 members included in our analysis, we classified 382 Catholics, 75 Jews, 35 Mormons, and 114 Others.
Evangelical Protestantism is a tradition of theologically conservative Protestant denominations and independent churches that have historically held four religious beliefs: a literal or very high view of scripture, a belief that Jesus is the only way to salvation, an emphasis on the conversion experience (often called being "born again"), and a focus on evangelism. Mainline Protestants are those predominantly white denominations that often belong to the umbrella group, the National Council of Churches. Mainliners are more "modernist" than the otherworldly Evangelicals, placing a greater emphasis on social involvement and less emphasis on proselytizing. The third Protestant tradition is Black Protestantism. Black Protestants are those denominations and churches of historically African American membership. Often holding beliefs similar to those of Evangelicals, these churches have had a very different historical development--including segregation both in society as a whole and within Protestantism--which spawne d a different worldview (Lincoln and Mamiya, 1990; Kellstedt et al., 1996; Wald, 1997). Table A. 1 contains denomination and tradition totals for Protestants.
TABLE A.1
Specific Religious Group Frequency within Three Protestant Traditions
Mainline Evangelical
Member- Member-
Years Members Years Members
Congregationalist 108 16
Congregational 174 23
Christian
Disciples of Christ 119 11
Episcopalian 1668 174
Evangelical & United 12 1
Brethren
Evangelical Reformed 29 2
Church
French Huguenot 8 1
Lutheran NFS 581 68
Methodist NFS 2131 214
Presbyterian NFS 1910 189
Protestant NFS 694 79
Quaker 59 5
United Church of 183 14
Christ
United Methodist 177 22
United Presbyterian 13 1
7th Day Adventist 33 4
Apostolic Christian 36 1
Assemblies of God 2 1
Associate Reformed Presbyterian 10 1
Baptist NFS 1344 136
Central Shwenkenfelder 8 1
Christian and Missionary Alliance 6 1
Christian Church 82 7
Christian NFS 16 4
Christian Reformed 14 3
Church of Christ 188 15
Church of God 9 1
Cumberland Presbyterian 12 1
Evangelical Free 40 2
Independent Bible Church 8 2
Independent Methodist 9 1
Southern Baptist 6 1
United Brethren of Christ 16 1
African Methodist Episcopal Zion
Primitive Baptist
Total 7866 820 1839 183
Black Protestant
Member-
Years Members
Congregationalist
Congregational
Christian
Disciples of Christ
Episcopalian 46 4
Evangelical & United
Brethren
Evangelical Reformed
Church
French Huguenot
Lutheran NFS
Methodist NFS 48 5
Presbyterian NFS 16 3
Protestant NFS 48 4
Quaker
United Church of 5 1
Christ
United Methodist
United Presbyterian
7th Day Adventist
Apostolic Christian
Assemblies of God
Associate Reformed Presbyterian
Baptist NFS 229 27
Central Shwenkenfelder
Christian and Missionary Alliance
Christian Church
Christian NFS 4 1
Christian Reformed
Church of Christ 12 1
Church of God
Cumberland Presbyterian
Evangelical Free
Independent Bible Church
Independent Methodist
Southern Baptist
United Brethren of Christ
African Methodist Episcopal Zion 39 4
Primitive Baptist 2 1
Total 449 51
TABLE 1
OLS Analysis of the Impact of Religion on Abortion Voting
All Years 1973-80 1981-94
Constant 21.034 *** 15.567 *** 27.201 ***
(4.907) (3.696) (4.445)
Hispanic 17.843 * 29.280 * 11.207
(9.152) (13.453) (9.931)
Female 3.061 7.722 -2.568
(4.781) (6.889) (-5.564)
East 6.427 * 8.432 8.360 *
(3.288) (3.698) (4.137)
South 8.185 -11.290 -6.319
(7.695) (-6.074) (-6.686)
West 15.977 *** 22.924 *** 11.325 *
(3.644) (4.203) (4.568)
Average Dem. vote 11.850 2.643 16.020
(9.506) (9.393) (8.336)
Dem. vote * South -20.841 21.542 1.998
(-12.679) (16.739) (13.034)
Democrat 28.664 *** 35.120 *** 27.710 ***
(3.015) (3.016) (3.229)
Evangelical -11.452 ** -9.529 * -9.804
(-3.962) (-4.382) (-5.111)
Catholic -19.945 *** -24.785 *** 17.560 ***
(-3.107) (-3.595) -3.840)
Black Protestant 25.712 *** 34.730 *** 21.398 **
(6.417) (9.483) (7.160)
Jewish 23.194 *** 29.085 *** 21.317 ***
(5.568) (6.891) (6.517)
Mormon -18.269 * -32.465 ** -9.266
(-8.338) (-10.691) (-9.823)
Other 1.929 5.762 4.446
(5.956) (6.606) (7.525)
[R.sup.2] .237 .337 .221
N 1082 682 757
SOURCES: Religion data collected by the authors (see Appendix);
biographical data from ICPSR #0004 abortion data courtesy of Greg Adams
(1997); average Democratic vote from yearly data in ICPSR #1108 (King,
1991; Gelman and King 1990).
NOTE: Standard errors are in ().
* p <.05,
** p <.01,
*** p < .001
TABLE 2
OLS Analysis of the Impact of Religion on Adjusted ADA Scores
All Years 1959-70 1971-80
Constant -2.465 9.059 *** 19.326 ***
(-1.242) (2.397) (3.000)
Hispanic 12.511 *** 10.572 13.212
(1.268) (6.731) (7.420)
Female 4.666 *** 1.628 1.957
(0.721) (2.918) (3.541)
East 7.213 *** 7.903 *** 6.183 ***
(0.408) (1.418) * 1.932)
South -2.087 * -0.434 -7.344
(-0.954) (-3.969) (-4.766)
West 0.223 3.034 -0.972
(0.466) (1.696) (-2.213)
Average Dem. vote 13.314 *** 14.564 ** 9.172
(1.260) (5.152) (5.892)
Dem. vote * South -36.218 *** -40.370 *** -34.860 ***
(1.518) (6.459) (-7.815)
Democrat 42.027 *** 40.696 *** 36.663 ***
(0.419) (1.333) (1.798)
Evangelical -6.801 *** -6.535 *** -6.051 **
(-0.487) (-1.720) (-2.284)
Catholic 2.365 *** 6.068 *** 1.595
(0.403) (1.595) (1.888)
Black Protestant 18.147 *** 14.810 ** 27.892 ***
(0.944) (5.348) (5.100)
Jewish 13.321 *** 14.154 *** 18.890 ***
(0.737) (3.338) (3.648)
Mormon -8.639 *** 0.135 -6.678
(-1.218) (3.992) (-5.639)
Other 5.272 *** 2.857 5.458
(0.747) (2.093) (3.178)
Year entered Congress 0.196 *** -- --
(.015)
[R.sup.2] .658 .731 .605
N 15581 802 765
1981-94
Constant 9.082 ***
(2.160)
Hispanic 14.119 ***
(3.927)
Female 9.471 ***
(2.114)
East 8.329 ***
(1.592)
South 1.247
(3.221)
West 0.244
(1.746)
Average Dem. vote 15.274 ***
(3.840)
Dem. vote * South -29.223 ***
(-5.287)
Democrat 46.012 ***
(1.361)
Evangelical -7.105 ***
(-1.912)
Catholic 0.043
(1.475)
Black Protestant 18.308 ***
(2.719)
Jewish 8.756 ***
(2.546)
Mormon -11.845 **
(-3.793)
Other 4.676
(2.794)
Year entered Congress --
[R.sup.2] 0.757
N 815
SOURCE: Religion data collected by the authors (see Appendix);
biographical data from ICPSR #0004; adjusted ADA scores courtesy of Greg
Adams and Chris Fastnow (1998); average Democratic vote from yearly data
in ICPSR #1108 (King, 1991; Gelman and King, 1990).
NOTE: Standard errors are in ().
* p < .05,
** p < .01,
*** p < .001.
* Direct all correspondence to Thomas Rudolph, Dept. of Political Science, University of Minnesota, 1414 Social Science Building, 267 19th Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55455-0410. Data on religious tradition are available from the authors for replication purposes. Requests for voting scores should be directed to the original collectors noted in the bibliography. The authors would like to thank the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, Greg Adams, Brock Blomberg, Tim Groseclose, James Guth, Lyman Kellstedt, Dave Peterson, and anonymous reviewers for providing data and/or assisting with the analysis in this project. Any remaining errors are, of course, our own.
(1.) Benson and Williams find that religious beliefs and voting are related, but using a different classification from ours, they find no relationship between religious affiliation and voting.
(2.) Rieselbach (1966) is the exception to this generalization.
(3.) For further explanation of religion's impact in the masses, see for example, Guth et al. (1991), Layman and Carmines (1997), and Stark and Bainbridge (1985).
(4.) Witt and Moncrief (1993) Create a third category for Mormons.
(5.) We follow the classification in Kellstedt et al. (1996). See the Appendix for details.
(6.) We do not have complete abortion vote information for members who entered Congress after 1989. We included post-1989 votes only for members who continued to serve after 1989 and for members who joined Congress after 1989 for whom we had complete information. Dropping the post-1989 votes does nor affect the analysis, apart from losing about 170 cases. Results of this and all other unreported analyses are available from the authors.
(7.) While ADA is not a direct measure of ideology, it does reflect the general ideological voting behavior of the members of the House, which is what we are truly interested in.
(8.) A member's ideology may remain fairly fixed over time. Our measures of ideological voting behavior, however, may not. A member with a score of 10 in one year may have a score of 30 the next, not because her ideology has shifted, but because the scale has. The adjusted ADA scores employed in this analysis place each member's ADA score on the same scale. We compute the mean adjusted ADA score as the central tendency of a member's ideologically based voting. Our data were provided by Adams and Fastnow (1998), using the transformation developed by Groseclose, Levitt, and Snyder (1999).
(9.) Data for average Democratic vote were taken from yearly data gathered from ICPSR study # 1108. For further information on these data, see King (1991) and Gelman and King (1990).
(10.) Simple OLS results may be driven by heteroskedastic errors: these scores are censored at 0 and 100. The remedy for data censored at both ends is Symmetrically Trimmed Least Squares (STLS) (see Levitt, 1996). Removing the extremes from the analysis, that is, all members whose lifetime scores were 0 or 100, should eliminate the heteroskedasricity. We ran OLS on the remaining members, generating similar coefficients, but producing a much smaller [R.sup.2].
(11.) We present analysis by decade for simplicity. Substantive results for six-year and annual increments are nearly identical to the decade analysis presented here.
(12.) The same model was run on unadjusted ADA averages, with substantially the same results.
(13.) OLS is suitable for this model, as the dependent variable, average adjusted ADA, is interval and technically unbounded. Again, we ran STLS on unadjusted ADA (which is bounded) to make sure heteroskedasticity was not driving the results, and again, we found that apart from a lower [R.sup.2], there was no difference in the results.
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[c] 1999 by the University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819
14214508
FT/IMG
Fastnow, Chris^Grant, J. Tobin^Rudolph, Thomas J.
17200454
meta:id:89929549 RSPEAK_STOP
Source Citation (MLA 7th Edition)
Fastnow, Chris, J. Tobin Grant, and Thomas J. Rudolph. "Holy roll calls: religious tradition and voting behavior in the U.S. House *." Social Science Quarterly 80.4 (1999): 687+. Academic OneFile. Web. 6 Nov. 2015.
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