Partisanship at a glance: Americans are electing legislators with little local loyalty
In the above visual, researchers have drawn a dot for each representative in Congress and connected the dots of members who vote together. The dots are place according to the frequency with which members vote along party lines. From PLOS.
Researchers from the Santa Fe Institute have created a striking visualization of how the U.S. Congress has become increasingly polarized since the 1950s. And, according to their findings, as congressional division has increased, legislative productivity has fallen.
Geographer Clio Andris, a former Santa Fe Institute postdoctoral fellow now at Pennsylvania State University, set out at the local level trying to determine if gerrymandered House districts could increase congressional cooperation because of their similarities.
“I found none,” Andris said.
In fact, members of Congress often agree with colleagues from the same party across the country rather than their next-door neighbors across the aisle.
During the 111th Congress, for instance, Democratic Rep. Phil Hare, who represented Illinois’ 17th congressional district, voted the same as Rep. Aaron Shock, a Republican from the state’s 18th district, 904 times. But Hare voted the same as Rep. Mazie Hitono, a Hawaii Democrat, 1,566 times.
Andris contends that partisan loyalty trumps geography, often to the detriment of regional diversity. In other words, it leads to a political situation where voters’ unique challenges, lifestyles or backgrounds are cast aside in favor of neat red and blue boxes, whether they like it or not.
The outcome of increased partisanship is a decrease in the amount of productive legislation Congress proposes and votes on and an accompanying decrease in voter satisfaction.
“Fewer ideas [are] being explored,” said Santa Fe Institute postdoctoral fellow Marcus Hamilton. “It seems to be that congressional innovation is suffering most because of partisanship.”
But, the research reveals, U.S. voters are either ignorant or indifferent (or, as another study recently show, vote like sports fans):
While U.S. voters have been selecting increasingly partisan representatives for 40 years, public opinion of the U.S. Congress has been steadily declining. This decline suggests that voters cast their ballots on a local basis for increasingly partisan representatives whom they view as best representing their increasingly partisan concerns, leaving few if any moderate legislators to connect parties for a more cohesive Congress. Elected representatives are increasingly unable to cooperate at a national Congressional level but are re-elected at least 90% of the time, reflecting an evasion of collective responsibility.
A Gallup poll from last year similarly illustrated the average voter’s cognitive dissonance. The polling agency’s annual “Mood of the Nation” poll showed that 46 percent of Americans would vote for their Congressional incumbents again. But only 17 percent of those questioned said that “most members of Congress” should be re-elected.
If Congress sucks, the person you put there probably isn’t without fault. And if you’re a straight-ticket voter, you share as much of the blame for the current state of the nation.
http://personalliberty.com/partisanship-at-a-glance-americans-are-electing-legislators-with-little-local-loyalty/
My comments: Today we have a battle of the godless, Secular Humanists and those who want to honor God and His Word. Locality has little to do with this struggle. The godless, Secular Humanists fail to realize that it is God Almighty Who will determine the Furture of America.
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