The graph was a compilation of DW-NOMINATE scores from 80th to the 105th Congress by the members of the House. Furthermore, to ensure that the graph correctly measured partisan ideology, the authors of the graph utilized the non-unanimous roll call votes of every member in each session. Then, the graph was organized to represent a liberal-conservative measurement ranging from -1.0 to 1.0. So, the most liberal members were classified as -1.0 and the most conservative members as 1.0. As such, this easily allowed Bond and Fleisher to compare the “distribution of positions taken by Democrats and Republican in different Congresses” (10).
In their analysis, they discovered earlier Congresses had less division compared to later decades. The 93rd Congress still had overlap between Democrats and Republicans, but the division became much more noticeable in the 101st Congress and continued to rise to the 105th Congress. Of course, this rise was attributed to major landmark decisions such as the Martha Lewinsky scandal of January 1998 where the Democrats and Republicans were sharply polarized on their stances. Most Republicans wanted the impeachment and removal of President Clinton, but “more than 80% of . . . Democrats opposed” (Bond & Fleisher …show more content…
McCarty had utilized data in “landmark cases to assess [polarization] on the legislative process” to produce Congressional terms which were the most and least polarized (Barber & McCarty 38). He had found 10 cases when Congress was least-polarized and 10 cases when they were most-polarized and evaluated his findings. McCarty had discovered Congressional terms with the least polarization had produced at least 16 legislative acts, while the most polarized terms “only produced slightly more than 10” (Barber & McCarty 38). The numbers may seem small in the beginning, but the difference is accentuated with each polarized