House Speakers & Polarization
Continuing my discussions on polarization I wanted to briefly discuss House Speaker’s. Below is a brief description on the previous five: Gingrich, Hastert, Pelosi, Boehner, and Ryan. Again, all of the data that I am using comes from Voteview. Generally speaking, that attitudes and beliefs of members of Congress remain constant. For more on that, you should read Changing Minds? Not in Congress! by Keith Poole, the primary individual behind Voteview. Below is a plot of the previous five speakers and their static locations with both dimensions using DW-NOMINATE points. The x-axis ( — , horizontal) represents economic scaling, and the y-axis (|, vertical) represents social scaling.

What we see is that Pelosi, Hastert, Gingrich, and Ryan are all scaled to being socially liberal. That is, they fall below the x-axis and have a score in the negative. Boehner is socially moderate and only very slightly to the right, that is, he is above the x-axis and has a score in the positive. The very distinct gap between these candidates based on their ideal points expressed above is that they differ significantly on economic policy. The the mean economic scale for the liberal coalition is -0.4, and Pelosi lands at -0.51. The ideological mean of the conservative coalition has shifted from +0.3 to +0.6. Gingrich is +0.37, and Ryan is +0.56.
In 2004, Keith Poole and Timothy Nokken adapted the static measure to better understand party defection. That measure is used below in the subsequent plots to show ideological movement for the previous five speaker’s. The Nokken-Poole scores show the deviation from a person’s ideal point to how they actually voted in each respective congress.
Below, each image on the left shows the linear change with respect to Nokken-Poole scores. Put another way, they show change over time for both measures. Each image on the right plots this change on a grid (or compass). The images on the right are not linear, and therefore cannot tell you the difference between each congressional session, but it can show you a more specific spread of change. This is all expressed more thoroughly below.


Newt Gingrich fluctuated when it came to social policy throughout his tenure in the House, but generally he remained below the x-axis which means that he moderated from a clear liberal stance to almost middle of the road. The same was true for economic conservatism, but shifted more to the right at the end of his time.


Dennis Hastert remained economically conservative, shifting only slightly throughout his tenure in the House, and ended by being more socially conservative. Hastert’s social policy changed fairly dramatically from being clearly in the left, and ending by being a moderate conservative. Dennis Hastert started off as a right-leaning libertarian with moderate left social views and clearly right economic policies. By the end of his time in the House his voting patterns indicated a more moderate but traditional conservatism — meaning that he was leaning more to the right on both economic and social policies.


Nancy Pelosi has become only marginally less liberal on economic issues, but remains very liberal nonetheless. While her voting record on social issues indicates a far more moderated stance since the 110th Congress, it should be not worthy that she entered into the political right on social policies in the 110th, 111th, and 114th congressional sessions.


John Boehner saw a lot of fluctuation during the 110th, 111th, and 112th congressional sessions, and generally speaking throughout his time in the House. Boehner supported extreme socially conservative measures, but also voted for economically moderate views during the last three sessions of his tenure.


Paul Ryan remained fairly stable on economic issues but has steadily moved closer to moderate conservative views since the 111th congress. In contrast, Ryan has reversed his social views, starting at -0.2 (a moderate liberal view) to +2.0 (a moderate conservative view). It’s noteworthy though that he voted for far more liberal social policy before moderating to the right. By some measure, Paul Ryan started off as a right-leaning libertarian. That is, he was left on social issues, and right on economic. By the 115th congress, however, he has shifted from being a right-libertarian to a moderate or traditional conservative.
The most fluctuation when it comes to roll call votes is on social policies, not economic. This may be that social policies function as a type of political capital to be traded for economic policies. Moreover, Pelosi and Hastert remained economically within a very close distance to static scores. In other words, there was very little change over time. Boehner and Ryan both shifted to the left on economic issues, and to the right on social policies. Ryan’s change was graduate, whereas Boehner’s was very dramatic. These changes may well be the product of the 2010 midterm elections. While the 2008 general elections brought with it a more vocal Tea Party as it related to economic woes, the 2010 and 2012 midterm and general brought with it a larger wave of social conservatives.
That said, it may be that ideal locations (dw-nominate scores) are static, and because the complex nature of politics and roll call votes what we actually see in a linear fashion is a reflection of political deals. To express this in an example, Pelosi’s shift on social policies into minor moderate conservatism may be a reflection of a need to vote on conservative social policy in order to secure other political goals rather than a reflection of a change in her core values.
Whatever the reasons, it is interesting to see the trends over time, and I believe that this is a valuable insight into other aspects of congressional polarization.

