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“Green” Voting and Ideology: LCV Scores and Roll-Call Voting in the U.S. Senate, 1988–1998

Jon P. Nelson

Pennsylvania State University

The Review of Economics and Statistics 2002

This study evaluates the roles of ideology, constituency, and political party for roll-call voting in the U.S. Senate on a broad set of environmental issues. The study estimates a model of political support using voting scores from the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) for the period 1988-1998, including observations on 91 senators for 130 roll-call votes. The study decomposes the scale-adjusted scores into relative weights due to the general electorate, the senator's support constituency, party leadership, and ideology. The main findings are that a senator's ideology is by far the most important consideration for voting profiles on environmental issues, and that party affiliation and regional loyalty explain about 74% of measured ideology. Hence, “green” voting tends to be highly partisan.

DOI
10.1162/003465302320259510
Volume
84 (3)
Pages
518-529
Language
en
Export
BibTeX
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