The Legislative Median and Partisan Policy

Abstract

We show that the median legislator in the US House is unambiguously closer to the majority party median than to the minority party median. An important implication of this finding is that the median legislator is predisposed to support the majority party's policy agenda. Thus, in the event that the majority party organization exerts no influence over the legislative process, and in the event that all policies then default to the legislative median, policy outcomes will still substantially favor the majority party over the minority. We demonstrate that the legislative median moves predictably toward the majority party in response to changes in majority control and the size and ideological homogeneity of the two parties. Consequently, the median legislators' partisan predisposition increases and decreases in response to electoral change. We conclude that partisan and floor majority, or median, theories of lawmaking are more often complementary than conflicting, and that party activities in the electoral arena have implications for legislative partisanship.