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The Persistence of Ideological Cleavage in Voting On Abortion Legislation in the House of Representatives, 1973-1988

Loyola University of Chicago

David Schier

Loyola University of Chicago

The longitudinal analysis reported here applies the same regression model to 54 roll calls on abortion bills in the House of Representatives during the eight Congresses from 1973 to 1988. A Guttman Scaling procedure is used that allows comparison across the eight Houses. The strongest predictor in all eight Houses is the ADA score followed by religion (Catholic, non-Catholic) ; representatives who vote liberal and who are non-Catholics tend to be pro-choice. Religion seems to be the likely reason why party is not a significant predictor of voting on abortion. To validate that hypothesis, separate regressions are created for Democrats and Republicans since 1981, and the results show that deviations among Democrats from pro-choice voting is due largely to religion. However, the causal relationship between ideology and pro-choice voting has been strengthened across these four Houses with an accompanying decline in the importance of religion. So a realignment in the House may be occurring given that Catholic Democrats are beginning to vote their ideological rather than their religious preference on abortion.

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