Thou Shalt Not Flip Flop: Senators’ Religious Affiliations and Issue Position Consistency

• Published date: 01 August 2015
• Author: John Mctague,Shanna Pearson‐Merkowitz
• Date: 01 August 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12082

JOHN MCTAGUE

Towson University

SHANNA PEARSON-MERKOWITZ

University of Rhode Island

Thou Shalt Not Flip Flop:

Senators’ Religious Affiliations

and Issue Position Consistency

Is there a relationship between legislators’ religious affiliations and the

consistency of their voting records? Building on the theory of “the personal roots of

representation,” we argue that a legislator’s likelihood of switching positions depends

on whether the issue is central to their personal values. We evaluate this claim using a

data set including senators’ religious affiliations and “culture war” votes from 1976 to

2004 and find that different religious groups vary in their voting consistency on issues

such as abortion, public prayer, and gay and lesbian rights.

What factors lead elected off‌icials to change their positions on

issues over time? While it is clear that legislators behave strategically in

order to advance their own power and shape public policy (Aldrich

1995; Fenno 1973), scholars have also discovered that legislators’

behavior is substantially driven by their personal values (Burden 2007;

Mansbridge 1999), including their religious beliefs (Benson and

Williams 1982; Green and Guth 1991; Oldmixon 2005). However, as

new issues appear on the agenda and as political conditions change over

the course of an elected representative’s career, what factors inf‌luence

how they adapt to such changes? We propose that adherents of particular

religious groups vary in the consistency of their roll-call voting based on

whether they receive clear guidance on the issue from their faith.

Members of Congress who identify with different religions vary in

their ideology, partisan aff‌iliation, voting patterns on discrete issues, and

in the extent to which they respond to the lobbying efforts of different

interest groups (D’Antonio, Tuch, and Baker 2013; Edwards Smith,

Olson, and Fine 2010; Fastnow, Grant, and Rudolph 1999; McTague

and Pearson-Merkowitz 2013; Oldmixon 2005; Oldmixon and Calfano

2007). While extant research shows that religion is an important factor

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, 40, 3, August 2015 417

DOI: 10.1111 /lsq.12082

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C2015 The Comparative Legislative Research Center of The University of Iowa

inf‌luencing legislative behavior, it is also increasingly apparent that such

inf‌luence is embedded in the broader political and partisan environment.

Two recent studies indicate that religious sorting within the congres-

sional party caucuses has occurred alongside the emergence of clashing

orthodox-versus-progressive ideological worldviews, growth in overall

party polarization, and polarization over “culture war” issues such as

abortion and gay and lesbian rights (D’Antonio, Tuch, and Baker 2013;

McTague and Pearson-Merkowitz 2013). For example, the emergence

of new “culture war” issues on the political agenda cleaved the parties in

fundamentally new ways that drove evangelical Protestant members of

Congress from the Democratic to the Republican Party (McTague and

Pearson-Merkowitz 2013); this f‌inding explains in part the increasingly

distinct party positions on abortion since the 1970s (Adams 1997; Karol

2009). This literature raises questions about how individual members of

Congress are guided by their personal values under dynamic political

conditions.

Here, we theorize that individual legislators’ likelihood of

changing their issue positions is shaped by whether the issue is deeply

connected to their personal values, as measured by religious aff‌iliation.

We evaluate our claims using a data set of US senators’ religious

aff‌iliations and cultural votes from 1976 to 2004. We f‌ind that different

religious groups in the Senate vary in their position consistency on issues

such as abortion, public prayer, and gay and lesbian rights. Evangelical

Protestants and Jews are the least likely to “f‌lip f‌lop” on these issues

compared to mainline Protestants. We conclude that individual-level

position consistency is a function of not only strategic calculations, but

also of individual senators’ sincere religious beliefs.

The Personal Roots of Issue Consistency:

The Culture Wars and Abortion

There is some debate in the literature as to whether elected off‌icials

maintain consistent voting records during their careers. The conventional

wisdom holds that elected off‌icials’ positions are largely stable over time

(Adams 1997; Carmines and Stimson 1989; Downs 1959; Poole and

Rosenthal 1997). This school of thought highlights the potential cost to

politicians who change their positions and invite accusations that they

are unprincipled “f‌lip f‌loppers” (Stimson 2004). Karol (2009), however,

argues that politicians frequently switch positions on issues characterized

by secular realignment. When a new issue emerges on the national

agenda, individual members of Congress have much greater f‌lexibility

to fashion and refashion a position on the issue until their party’s stance

418 John McTague and Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz