Guest Column: How Partisan are Texas House Members?
[Editor's note: Mark P. Jones, chair of Rice University's political science department, has updated his rankings of Texas state representatives based on their votes during the regular and special sessions this year. Some things you might already suspect, like the fact that Ken Paxton, R-McKinney, was statistically the most conservative voter in the House this year and that Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, was the most liberal voter. Who was on the border line? Tracy King, D-Batesville, was the most conservative Democratic voter and Aaron Peña, R-Edinburg, was the most liberal Republican voter. That's probably not a ...
Comments (5)
Wally Renfro
this is a perfect example of why academics miss much of what "actually" takes place in the legislature. Sure, if votes in themselves provide a credible signal of a member's partisanship this would be great, however, much of the "real" partisanship - the deal-making, bargaining, compromise (if any), and quid pro quo - takes place well before the actual vote occurs - in committee, in the hallways, in the backrooms. In reality, the actual vote for many members is symbolic once party leaders know whether or not they have the votes to pass. It might also be nice to correlate these results with the individual member's margin of victory in the last election: you will likely see the most liberal or conservative members were in the safest districts.
Beverly Nuckols
How partisan is Jones? "Liberal/moderate" shows an inability to simply say, "liberal."
On the other hand, he does confirm that when politicians are called or urged to be "moderate, we are really talking about becoming more like the left.
Lesley Ramsey
The Trib graphic paints a picture of the Democrats being significantly more partisan than the Republicans. When in the minority to the degree they were in this session, it makes sense that they would be voting more as a block -- against a super majority that provided room for the republicans to take a walk, or vote "independently." I really think the graphic unfairly portrays the Democrats as more *partisan* than the Republicans when I think what the original paper shows is how liberal the D's are comparedto each other and how conservative the Rs are compared to each other. And I'm not even sure it shows that. I think what it really shows is the extent to which the members voted with their party -- which is not the same as illustrating how liberal, moderate or conservative they are.
In this time of fast-food style media, images are important. It's often all people "read." Please be more conscientious about what story you are telling with your images.
sam kindle
mark p. jones is apparently pretty far to the right since if you are considered liberal you can only be represented by a negative number. looks like he used to be in advertising before he got appointed to the state job. consequently donna howard no matter how practical or reasonable her efforts may be can in this chart only be represented as a negative influence. no matter how invasive or demeaning the conservatives are they are represented as positive. punked you guys so easy.
Ida Sessions
Lesley is right - the explanatory piece should have been front and center, and edited more actively. But hey, Sam: Rice isn't a public university, so Jones wasn't appointed to a state job.