Blog 5: Ideology and Voting

DW-NOMINATE Scores:

The DW-Nominate score is a multi-dimensional scaling method to analyze data that can then be used to predict the voting and roll-call behaviour of legislators.  For Senator Pryor, his most recent score is -0.205.  His past rankings were, in chronological order:

-0.22, -0.234 -0.249, and -0.264.  This indicates that Senator Pryor is getting lightly less liberal with each scoring season in the Senate.  This makes a lot of sense to me, as he is a Democrat in a traditionally conservative state and, if he is acting a true combination of delegate and trustee, than his voting record would depict a shift toward being more moderate, as that is safer ground, especially considering his chances of being reelected.

Party Vote/ Crossing Party Lines on Any Issues:

To first speak in generalities, govtrack.us, as well as Senator Pryor himself, depict Pryor as a centrist Democrat who prides himself, rather robustly, about being more than willing to work across party lines and pass legislation that helps his constituents in Arkansas.  According to the chart provided by govtrack.us, it shows that what Pryor preaches is also what he practices. 

He falls in the center of Democrats and Republicans on his voting record, leaning toward the Democrat side of things without abandoning his commitment to working across the aisle.  There are a few Democrats who are even more centrist than he, at least it would seem so from the chart, but Pryor certainly holds his own and commits to the issues that will matter for Arkansas, regardless of party affiliation – it would seem.   I am curious if what Pryor does will really be best for Arkansas, or if he hopes his constituents can’t see the forest for the trees and will instead vote across party lines to make himself look better without careful deliberation of the issues at hand.  To the uniformed or apathetic voter, they might see Pryor reaching across the aisle as beneficial and will decide to reelect him based on that merit alone, regardless of the issues he is actually supporting or trying to shoot down.

To speak with more specificity now, the extremely helpful Congress section of the Washington Post reports Pryor as voting with his party 82% of the time for the last 92 votes that were taken.  In the 112^th Congress, Pryor voted with his party 89% of the time out of the 484 votes taken.

On key votes, it would seem that Senator Pryor generally knows how to pick winning pieces of legislation and vote for those.  He voted; as did most Democrats and not most Republicans, for Middle-class tax relief, to extend the payroll tax holiday and unemployment benefits, and for the blocking birth-control exemption. 

With regard to issues that Republicans generally favored and Democrats do not, Pryor voted to repeal the ethanol subsidy, against the Keystone pipeline amendment (the second time this was voted upon, and as of March 14^th, Mark Pryor is officially approving the Keystone Pipeline according to a press release issued), and the amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.

An odd thing I came across while looking at Pryor’s voting records on key issues is that he voted against the DREAM Act, against the Democrat majority, which would have created a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children.  As an officer in my high school’s Diversity Club, a friend to many undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as young children, I remember fighting for the DREAM Act alongside my Diversity Club members.  Given Pryor’s record, I thought he would be more sympathetic to the plight of these undocumented immigrants, but alas he was not.  As I mentioned before, he tends to vote yes on bills that end up passing – this must be a sixth sense of his – and the DREAM Act was rejected, which might explain Pryor’s lack of support.

ADA and Interest Group Scores:

            According to Compare Arkansas Senators Liberal Ratings, his Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) score is 70%.  Electoral-vote.com says that if a voter aligns themselves with more progressive ideals, a good senator would have a higher percentage.  Likewise, if a voter identifies as a conservative, a good senator to represent them would have a lower percentage score.

            Senator Pryor is the most progressive in his NARAL (National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League) history, earning a score of 100%.  From there, the NAACP ranks in second place with 93%, and the CDF (Children’s Defense Fund) with 90%.

            He is most conservative concerning the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), earning a score of 45%.