Further Evidence of the Partisan Consequences of Legislative Professionalism

In an earlier article I hypothesized that the professionalization of American state legislatures enhanced the electoral fortunes of the Democratic Party. While the statistical analyses reported in that article were consistent with the hypothesis, there has been lingering concern that the finding may be spurious. Specifically, if voter preferences within states increasingly supported both professionalization and Democratic candidates, the link between professionalization and Democratic success would reflect these underlying unmeasured preferences. Recently, state-specific time series measures of voter ideology were reported in an AJPS Workshop article. Incorporating these into the earlier analysis shows that shifts in voter ideology have a significant relationship to Democratic success, but the original relationship between professionalization and Democratic success is unaffected.