The impact of legislator and constituency ideology on voting on the assault weapons ban |
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| Institution: | 1. CORE, Chair Lhoist Berghmans, Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium;2. European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), Ispra, Italy;3. Louvain School of Management, Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium;4. Department of Economics and Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland;1. Duke University and NBER, USA;2. University of Chicago Crime Lab, USA;3. University of Chicago, USA;1. ECARES, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium;2. CEPR, United Kingdom;3. Institute of Economics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary;4. CESifo, Germany;5. VCEE, Austria;6. Lancaster University Management School, United Kingdom |
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| Abstract: | Using variables that represent a legislator's entire legal constituency, previous research by social scientists has concluded that views of the legislator's constituency have little effect on how legislators vote. This question is reexamined by defining constituency as those voters most likely to vote for the legislator (i.e., members of the legislator's own political party and independents). Furthermore, instead of measuring constituency by either a demographic or vote-based measure, a survey measure of the ideological identification of voters (i.e., the voter's self-identification as liberal, moderate, or conservative) is introduced. It is found that the ideology of a senator's electoral constituency was an important factor on the recent U.S. Senate vote to ban 19 semi-automatic assault weapons. The findings have important implications for how social scientists conceptualize and measure constituency. |
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