Research
Articles
ROBERT S. ERIKSON
Columbia University
GERALD C. WRIGHT
Indiana University
JOHN P. McIVER
University of Colorado
Measuring the Public's
Ideological Preferences in the 50 States: Survey Responses Versus Roll Call
Data
For
some time now, our team has reported states' ideological preferences as
the mean ideological self-identification of respondents in CBS News/New
York Times polls (Wright, Erikson, and McIver 1985; Erikson, Wright, and
McIver 1993). Recently, Brace et al. (2002, 2004) have reported measuring
state ideological self-identification using data from the American National
Election Studies (NES) and the General Social Survey (GSS) surveys. Using
these two independent datasets, our two teams have both concluded that
aggregated state-level ideological preferences are overwhelmingly stable
over time, at least in recent decades. Theory does not demand that such
ideology be constant. In fact, we know that ideology's sister variable,
state-level party identification, does vary over time both in absolute
and relative terms (Erikson, Wright, and McIver 2006). But there can be
little doubt that when measuring state ideological preferences as the
mean self-report of citizen preferences, the absolute and relative positions
of the states have been very stable from year to year, going back at least
to the mid-1970s.
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