A study to be published in September’s Political Research Quarterly set out to uncover to what extent members of Congress respond unequally to people in different economic situations, and asked whether partisan control of the agenda changes how Senators respond to the poor.
The study’s conclusion reads differently than pop culture would have you think: “Republicans are more responsive than Democrats to middle-income constituents in the 109th Congress, and a case study of the 107th Senate reveals that responsiveness toward the wealthy increases once Democrats take control of the chamber.”
Researcher Thomas Hayes, of Trinity University, compared constituents’ opinions to the voting behavior of their Senators in the 107th (2001) through 111th Congresses (2011) using data from the 2004 National Annenberg Election Survey — with 90,000 respondents, the largest public opinion survey conducted during presidential elections.
“The fact that lower income groups seem to be ignored by elected officials, although not a new finding, remains a troubling observation in American politics,” wrote Hayes, according to Raw Story.
Karen Cyphers, PhD, is a public policy researcher, political consultant, and mother to three daughters. She can be reached at karen@cyphersgroup.com.
