The Partisanship of Bipartisanship: How
Representatives Use Bipartisan Assertions to Cultivate
Support
Sean J. Westwood ∗
Assistant Professor
Department of Government
Dartmouth College
Abstract
How do representatives reconcile the actual content of legislation with often contradictory citizen expectations? To increase support, vote-seeking representatives attempt to
shape how voters perceive the processes underpinning legislative outcomes. Representatives use rhetoric to position partisan legislation as bipartisan to cultivate an image
of consensus building. Because constituents respond to presentations of the legislative
process, representatives reap the benefits associated with bipartisanship, providing little incentive to engage in actual substantive compromise. Analysis of 304,763 congressional floor speeches shows that legislators evoke bipartisanship uniformly across
the ideological spectrum and that no relationship exists between a legislators propensity for bipartisan action and their propensity for bipartisan rhetoric. Indeed, legislators
who need to appear bipartisan—marginal legislators—are most likely to make bipartisan appeals. With experiments I show that bipartisan rhetoric increases support and
decreases perceived ideological extremity—even for overtly partisan legislation with
trivial opposition support.
∗I
thank Kyle Dropp, Justin Grimmer, Shanto Iyengar, Yphtach Lelkes, Solomon Messing, and Jonathan
Mummolo for helpful guidance and feedback. I benefited greatly from the support of Princeton’s Center for
the Study of Democratic Politics.
Constituents learn about the positions and actions of their representatives through what their
representatives say. Representatives make claims to cultivate support from constituents and to influence constituent perceptions (Lipinski 2009; Sellers 2009; Mayhew 1974; Grimmer 2013). For
example, they regularly claim credit for expenditures to cultivate a personal vote (Cain, Ferejohn,
and Fiorina 1987; Lazarus and Reilly 2009; Levitt and Snyder Jr 1997). They claim responsibility for policy decisions and legislative action to assert ownership and responsibility for legislation
(Lipinski 2009; Sellers 2009; Mayhew 1974). In this paper I show that representatives also make
claims about the legislative processes underpinning legislative outcomes to increase public support.
Representatives characterize the legitimacy, bipartisanship and merit of legislation by selectively
presenting information on the process of lawmaking.
This works because of how voters evaluate legislators. First, voters are constrained by their
minimal knowledge of Congress and congressional action, which makes it is difficult for even
the most informed and equipped voter to follow legislation as it advances through Congress. For
example, constituents know little about the complexities of federal spending (Bickers and Stein
1996), and therefore allocate credit to legislators for outlays for which the legislator had no direct
responsibility (Grimmer, Westwood, and Messing 2014). Constituents know just as little about policy positions and legislation (Converse 1964; Carpini 1997)), and, as a result, constituents—often
erroneously—project their own positions on to their representatives (Wilson and Gronke 2000;
Conover and Feldman 1989; McAllister and Studlar 1991) and assume that their representatives
adopt party-consistent positions (Dancey and Sheagley 2013). Recent work shows that the most
politically knowledgeable are actually the most likely to incorrectly identify a senator’s position
when she deviates from her party’s position (Dancey and Sheagley 2013). Constituent knowledge
of the processes of forming legislation is just as meager and, as a consequence, just as open to
misinformation and misconceptions as their knowledge of other aspects of governance.
Second, constituent understanding of the processes of lawmaking largely comes from information they get from their representatives via the media and via direct communication from candidates
offices (press releases, Twitter, Facebook, newsletters, etc.). Reliance on mediated presentations of
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lawmaking rather than direct knowledge of the myriad of steps in the legislative process and the details of roll call votes makes voter attitudes susceptible to manipulation. Representatives regularly
exploit constituent ignorance by offering interpretations of legislation and the legislative process.
Strategic dissemination of information to form a perception of legislative action on specific policy domains is well documented. Some cultivate perceptions that they are internationally-focused
statespeople or domestically-focused appropriators by selectively presenting information and legislative achievements to voters (Grimmer 2013). Representatives who wish to cultivate perceptions
as consensus-builders similarly, I theorize, tailor the information they disseminate to voters on the
nature of the legislation they support or oppose.
In this paper I demonstrate how representatives present interpretations of the process of lawmaking using the example of bipartisanship. Representatives focus attention on bipartisanship
because it functions as “an electoral strategy that broaden[s] their appeal to voters outside of their
party” (Trubowitz and Mellow 2005, p. 433). I show that representatives, aware of the electoral
appeal of bipartisanship, maximize possible returns by tailoring the information they disseminate
to voters to present their actions as broadly bipartisan, regardless of actual bipartisan agreement or
support. Although the term bipartisan has strong positive valence, it lacks a clear definition. Representatives exploit this definitional ambiguity to present their work as bipartisan, knowing that a
majority of constituents view the concept positively and associate it with a normatively good aspect
of democratic governance. Thus, legislators unable to set the policy agenda and those who need to
position themselves as moderate consensus-builders exploit public ignorance and inattentiveness
of the process of legislating.
With a series of experiments, I show how bipartisan assertions effectively change constituent
attitudes toward legislation (increasing support and decreasing perceived ideological extremity).
Broad coalitions of representatives and ideologically moderate legislation are both factual indications of bipartisanship. However, voters require neither when evaluating claims of bipartisan
action. Indeed, I show that constituents are responsive to assertions that legislation is bipartisan,
even when the legislation is overtly partisan in purpose. This shows that members of Congress can
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cultivate impressions of moderate policy-making with minimal effort and without defining or justifying what bipartisanship actually means. In a second study I demonstrate that when evaluating
passed legislation constituents are far more responsive to the label “bipartisan” than to the actual
number of votes pulled from across the aisle. Adding a single representative from the opposition
to a legislative coalition and declaring bipartisan action creates a larger increase in public support
relative to the return from buying and assembling a large coalition (with only a marginal gain in
public support achieved from a 100 member-strong minority contingent compared to the gain from
a single defector). In a final experiment I show that asserting bipartisanship is advantageous, even
in the presence of refutation. Constituents fail to penalize dishonest characterizations of bipartisan
action and refutation effects quickly decay. Exposure to a refuted claim also does not inoculate a
respondent against positively responding to a future bipartisan assertion.
Bipartisan assertions effectively increase public support and create impressions of moderate
policy-making, but they can also pervert democratic governance. Representatives offer accounts
of the process of representation that maximize public support, even if these accounts are not fully
accurate. Bipartisan assertions set false expectations of compromise and collaboration among voters. Constituents hear about bipartisan action from their representatives while gridlock paralyzes
Congress and partisan attacks drive political campaigns and partisan news. Ironically, the strategic
use of bipartisanship by representatives also likely disincentivizes political compromise. Because
elected officials can use even minimal opposition support to claim bipartisan legitimacy, parties
can gain more from luring a small group of defectors than from building a large coalition.
This paper proceeds in two parts. First I characterize how legislators use broad conceptions of
bipartisanship when communicating about their actions and records. Second, I show how legislator
assertions of bipartisanship change constituent opinions.
Bipartisanship and the Extant Literature
The decidedly centrist electorate (Bafumi and Herron 2010; Fiorina and Abrams 2008), while
strongly supporting moderate, bipartisan lawmaking (Pew 2012, 2007) elects increasingly ideologically polarized representatives (McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal 2006; Levendusky 2009; Theriault
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2008; Fiorina and Levendusky 2006).1 How can partisan legislators garner and maintain support
in the face of broad public desire forbipartisanship? In this paper I develop and test a model of
impressionistic bipartisanship.
Current scholarship on bipartisanship roughly splits into two groups: analyses of how constituents respond to bipartisan legislation, and historical analysis of bipartisan action in Congress.
Work in the first group shows how constituents respond to accounts of the past behavior of elected
representatives (Harbridge and Malhotra 2011; Morris and Witting 2001), how constituents respond to the details of compromise policies (Harbridge, Malhotra, and Harrison 2014), and why
constituents dislike the procedures and haggling necessary to form legislative compromises (Hibbing and Theiss-Morse 1995). From this work we know that strong partisans respond negatively to
co-partisan representatives who consistently vote across party lines and that constituents evaluate
compromise legislation less positively than legislation made without compromises. Constituents,
however, rarely possess the kind of perfect information on the legislative process required to make
the kinds of detailed evaluations of legislator behavior shown in these studies. They also often lack
the interest required to understand legislation fully.
The second group of literature characterizes the bipartisan behavior of committees (Fenno
1973), shows the prevalence of bipartisan co-sponsorship (Harbridge 2014) and details historical periods of bipartisan lawmaking (e.g. McCormick and Wittkopf 1990). When measured by
total votes, Congress is historically bipartisan (Mayhew 1991), with some arguing that super majorities are less costly than assumed and should therefore outnumber minimum winning coalitions (Groseclose and Snyder 1996), though this is contested (see Banks 2000). Bipartisan votes
characterize even the highly polarized and affectively charged modern era (Adler and Wilkerson
2013), as does legislative co-sponsorship from both sides of the aisle (Harbridge 2014). Prominent legislation (Harbridge 2014) and legislation dealing with “bread and butter” issues (Fenno
1973) are especially likely to attract bipartisan support. This is partly an artifact of the structure of
Congress—committees and leadership suppress minority-sponsored and ideologically extreme leg1 Replication
data and scripts will be posted at the time of publication.
4
islation, which stops bills with only minimal support from reaching a floor vote. Constituents also
punish legislators who adopt ideologically extreme positions (Canes-Wrone, Brady, and Cogan
2002; Ensley, Tofias, and De Marchi 2009) or who are overly partisan (Carson, Koger, Lebo, and
Young 2010). Consequently, both parties support the majority of legislation that passes Congress,
though the number of bipartisan votes and the number of representatives crossing party lines has
decreased in recent years. What is currently unknown, is if legislators constrain their discussion
of bipartisanship to legislative compromises supported by both parties. If representatives exploit
constituent ignorance and focus on cultivating a brand of consensus-building, we should not expect
representatives to constrain bipartisan assertions to broadly supported legislative compromises.
What Is Bipartisanship?
Voters think that “[b]ipartisans put principle above electoral self-interest” (Trubowitz and Mellow 2005, p. 433). Bipartisanship means cooperation, collaboration and compromise. It is good
to be bipartisan in the minds of voters, which increases the incentives for representatives in need
of public support to appear bipartisan. Although bipartisanship is prevalent in congressional action, representatives increase their ability to assert bipartisanship by broadening its definition and
peppering their communication with the term. I show that legislators present partisan action as
bipartisan to advance policy goals and to frame public opinion.
Although there is agreement that bipartisanship is a positively valanced term, there is no single
definition of bipartisanship in politics. The literature generally defines bipartisanship as floor votes
where members of both parties vote together (Adler and Wilkerson 2013) or legislation with cosponsors from both parties (Harbridge and Malhotra 2011; Harbridge 2014). Legislators, however,
define bipartisanship much more broadly and do so for strategic partisan gains. Given the number
of stages in the legislative process and the varying number of legislators involved in each stage
makes it hard for constituents to keep track of the size and importance of opposition support (i.e.,
the support of seven opposition legislators on a committee could be large, but during a floor vote
support from the same number of opposition legislators would be small). Because of this vagueness
political actors have the opportunity to define the term and use it to their advantage.
5
Those who want public support for legislation might call a bill bipartisan if it gains a single
vote across the aisle. For example, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs called Affordable Care Act bipartisan “by definition” (Gibbs 2009) because of a single vote from Representative Anh “Joseph” Cao
(R-LA, 2nd). Even those at the ideological extremes of Congress attempt to use bipartisanship
to legitimate their priorities and frame required participation of the political opposition on congressional committees as bipartisanship. Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA, 49th), Chairman of
the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, after adjourning a hearing and cutting
off the microphone of a Democratic committee member told reporters that his work investigating
Louis Lerner was bipartisan because a “bipartisan committee” is conducting the investigation. Political scientists might find these assertions laughable and absurd, but as I show with experimental
evidence in the second half of this manuscript, constituents are responsive to these interpretations
of legislative action.
Legislators exploit constituent support for bipartisanship despite a general lack of understanding of what the term actually means. To demonstrate this point I surveyed 1,055 respondents drawn
by Survey Sampling International (SSI). Participants defined bipartisanship in an open response
question 2 and then placed bipartisanship on a bipolar “Good” to “Bad” scale.
The top of Figure 1 shows that two thirds of respondents cannot define bipartisanship. Nevertheless, the bottom of the same figure shows that only 16% of respondents view bipartisanship as
bad, with nearly a majority (45%) indicating that bipartisanship is good. Constituents do not have
a solid understanding of the term bipartisanship, but do seem to like it (or at least not object to it).
Constituents may have some understanding of bipartisanship even if they cannot define it in
clear terms. To test the limits of constituent understanding of congressional bipartisanship I participants were randomly assigned to view a single statement on congressional action. The statement indicates a trivial level of support from the political opposition (three representatives) on
a piece of legislation. Participants were told they would answer a question about a scenario
2 Responses were evaluated with a very loose standard. Responses that indicated that bipartisanship is 1) political and 2) a political outcome/process were marked as correct. Example responses are included in the Supporting
Materials. Participants were also told not to consult outside resources.
6
Figure 1: Constituent (Mis)understanding of Bipartisanship
67% Incorrect
0%
33% Correct
25%
50%
75%
100%
Defintion of Bipartisanship
16% Bad
39% Neutral
0%
25%
45% Good
50%
75%
100%
Valence of Bipartisanship
regarding the House of Representatives and were then shown one of the following: “Thinking
about the following scenario, would you say it describes bipartisanship or not?: Three [Republicans/Democrats] join [Democrats/Republicans] to pass legislation.” Figure 2 shows that in both
scenarios (Democrats joining Republicans, and Republicans joining Democrats) a majority of participants indicated that the scenario described bipartisanship. Importantly, the results are nearly the
same when Republicans and Democrats evaluate co-partisan legislators who join the opposition
and opposition legislators who join co-partisans. Fewer than 33% of Republicans and Democrats
indicated that either scenario did not describe bipartisanship.
Figure 2: What is Bipartisanship?
Independents
Republicans
Democrats
50%
55%
57%
0%
26%
25%
20%
25%
50%
75%
24%
20%
23%
Response
Yes
No
Don't know
100%
Assessment of Three Republicans Joining Democrats
Independents
Republicans
Democrats
45%
57%
58%
0%
23%
32%
33% 10%
21% 21%
25%
50%
75%
Response
Yes
No
Don't know
100%
Assessment of Three Democrats Joining Republicans
The majority of Americans support bipartisan action and are responsive to bipartisan legislation, but strong partisans are significantly less supportive of individual legislators who vote for
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policies supported by the opposition (Harbridge and Malhotra 2011). Why then do legislators
driven by a desire for reelection (Mayhew 1974) increase associations with bipartisanship if bipartisanship can decrease constituent support? One explanation, tested here, is that representatives
use bipartisanship to posture. Asserting bipartisan support is distinct from yielding during negotiations or voting with the other party. Compromises lead to decreases in support from partisans, but
as I show in the second section of this paper, calling for bipartisanship or asserting bipartisanship
without describing compromises leads to increases in public support.
If legislators use bipartisanship as a strategic tool, we should expect that bipartisan appeals are
not related to ideological centrism or actual bipartisan behavior. We should also expect that those
with the most to gain from appearing bipartisan—marginal legislators—will be especially likely to
appeal to bipartisanship. I test these expectations in the following sections.
Mechanisms Explaining Constituent Responses to Bipartisan Frames
Representatives use bipartisanship strategically because constituents are responsive to the term.
The broad application of the term bipartisan to partisan legislation that I document in legislator
rhetoric is a successful strategy because of how constituents evaluate information.
Attaching “bipartisanship” to a policy will, if citizens are uninformed or unmotivated to audit representative behavior, likely convince constituents that legislation is actually bipartisan. The
majority of Americans possess a minimal understanding of congressional processes and have low
levels of policy-specific knowledge (Carpini and Keeter 1993; Campbell, Converse, Miller, and
Stokes 1960). With little information and a low incentive to invest time in political tasks (Downs
1957), constituents—acting as cognitive misers—consistently deploy cognitive shortcuts in political decision tasks (Lau and Redlawsk 2001; Fiske and Taylor 2013; Kuklinski, Quirk et al. 2000).
Instead of deeply evaluating claims and arguments, constituents make judgements with simple
heuristics cues (Lupia, McCubbins, and Popkin 2000; Kahneman and Tversky 1982). As Lau and
Redlawsk (2001) note, the use of heuristic shortcuts is incredibly common among constituents,
and these shortcuts—because of incomplete cognitive evaluation—can lead to incorrect assessments and decisions. Thus only the most politically sophisticated have the ability or motivation to
8
evaluate claims of bipartisanship
Even absent cognitive biases, the fact that bipartisanship is difficult to define and time consuming to validate means voters are unlikely to evaluate it with any accuracy.
The Strategic Use of Bipartisan Rhetoric by Representatives
To show how representatives distort public opinion, I characterizing how representatives make
bipartisan appeals and position themselves as bipartisan. To do this I use the Congressional Record.
Floor speeches are both a means to connect with voters (Hill and Hurley 2002) and a way to express
policy positions (Zaller and Chiu 1996). Representatives use floor speeches to put their opinions
on “the record” (Mayhew 1974), to define their preferences, and to present their assessments of the
opposition publicly. The media, in turn, cover what representatives say on the floor (Maltzman and
Sigelman 1996).3 Floor speeches require effort to prepare and to execute, which makes it unlikely
that legislators would dedicate the time and resources required for a floor speech if they did not
expect a return. Indeed, representatives regularly fill floor speeches with rhetoric designed to gain
attention and coverage from the media in furtherance of their political agenda (Grimmer, King, and
Superti 2014) and ultimately to secure reelection (Mayhew 1974).
On the floor representatives talk about a need for bipartisan action, call for support of legislation
they label bipartisan, claim credit for instances where they believe either they or the House were
bipartisan, and more. Although it is possible to contest portrayals of legislation as bipartisan, the
positive valence of the concept makes it hard to refute. Few legislators would argue that they are,
in fact, partisan because they don’t want to risk the consequences of appearing overly partisan
(Carson et al. 2010).
To characterize the use of bipartisanship by members of Congress I use the entire set of congressional floor speeches between 1992 and 2012 (304,763 speeches).4 Unlike other subjects where
a variety of terms and phrases are used to express a single concept, “bipartianship” is a precise
3 The
importance of media coverage of floor speeches is clear from the dramatic uptick in floor speeches after the
start of C-SPAN coverage (Garay 1984).
4 Floor speeches were downloaded from the Library of Congress. I start in 1992 because of limits to digital access
prior to this point.
9
concept that is rarely expressed with other phraseology.5 . An algorithm searched each floor speech
for the occurrence of the terms “bipartisan” and “bipartisanship.” Whenever a match occurred
the entire speech and the sentence containing the search term were extracted and saved for more
detailed classification. Because most floor speeches are long and discussion of bipartisanship is
usually limited to a single sentence, the unit of analyses in this paper is the sentence using the term.
Bipartisanship Rhetoric and the House
Members of Congress frequently reference bipartisanship. Of the 304,763 speeches made on
the floor of the house during the 104th-111th Congresses, 32,465 (10.65%) engage bipartisanship. Figure 3 shows that the overall amount of bipartisan discussion remains mostly consistent
for the 104th-111th Congresses. There is a sizable uptick in discussion of bipartisanship when
Republicans loose control of the House during the 110th Congress, but this is a result of increased
bipartisan rhetoric from Republicans and not an increase in conciliatory efforts to secure compromise from Democrats. The analyses that follow do not establish a causal relationship between
bipartisan discussion and legislator traits and behaviors, but they do show that bipartisanship is
broadly engaged by members of Congress and that it varies in systematic ways.
Turning to the relationship between partisan affiliation and the discussion of bipartisanship,
Figure 3 shows the rate of bipartisan discussion by party over time. The background color corresponds to the party in control of the House, the solid vertical lines correspond to presidential
elections and the dashed vertical lines correspond to mid-term elections. Immediately after a
party loses control of the House (1995, 2007 and 2011) discussion of bipartisanship by members of the minority party increases. There is a similar though less dramatic decrease in discussion
of bipartisanship by the party that gains control of the House. Bipartisan discussion is also related to the election cycle. When partisans need to appeal to broad groups of voters—presidential
elections—bipartisan talk increases. When, however, partisans need support from their base—
midterm elections—bipartisan discussion decreases.
If talk of bipartisanship is related to bipartisan intent we would expect that more moderate
5 There
are other phrases related to bipartisanship such as “working across the aisle,” but these phrases generally
co-occur with the explicit use of “bipartisan” or “bipartisanship.”
10
3.5
3.0
2.5
2.0
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
1998
1997
1996
1995
Monthly Disccusion of Bipartisanship
Figure 3: Discussion of Bipartisanship in the US House of Representatives By
Party (1995-2011)
Date
The lines are GAM curves and the shaded areas surrounding the curves are 95% confidence intervals. The background color corresponds to the party in control of the House, the solid vertical lines
presidential elections and the dashed vertical lines mid-term elections.
legislators—those most likely to cross party lines—should discuss bipartisanship more often. If,
however, bipartisanship is used strategically to frame debates and legislation, no such relationship
would exist. Figure 4 shows that it doesn’t; there is no consistent relationship between discussion
of bipartisanship and DW-Nominate scores (Poole and Rosenthal 1997). There are two Congresses
where moderate Republican representatives engage in bipartisan talk more than the average Republican, but this trend is short-lived and not mirrored in Democratic behavior. Representatives across
the ideological spectrum use bipartisan claims—those at the partisan extremes utilize bipartisanship in their representational strategies at nearly the same levels as moderates.
Although bipartisan discussion is unrelated to ideology it is systematically related to representative traits. Refusing to deviate from party positions hurts marginal representatives in general
elections (Koger and Lebo 2012; Carson et al. 2010). So it is electorally advantageous for marginal
representatives to position as bipartisan, even if the evidence to support such claims is not ideal.
Figure 5 shows that representatives with the largest incentives to work with the opposition party—
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Representative Discussion of Bipartisanship
Figure 4: Discussion of Bipartisanship is Uniform Across Ideology
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
−1.0
−0.5
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
0.0
0.5
1.0
−1.0
−0.5
0.0
0.5
1.0
DW Nominate
Party
Democrat
Republican
This figure shows that bipartisan discussion is common across the ideological spectrum. The lines
are LOESS curves and the shaded areas surrounding the curves are 95% confidence intervals. The
black horizontal line is the mean level of bipartisan discussion for all Congresses.
party leaders and marginal representatives—discuss bipartisanship more often than other representatives. Party leaders engage bipartisanship during floor debate more than twice as often as rank
and file members (24.33 more uses, 95% confidence interval [18.13, 30.54]). Marginality, measured with the share of the two-party vote for the presidential candidate from the legislators party
in the most recent presidential election, also increases discussion of bipartisanship. Marginal representatives discuss bipartisanship at higher rates than aligned representatives (12.41 more, 95%
confidence interval [5.47, 19.36]). Because marginal politicians are less able to change policies
or control the legislative agenda they use more symbolic acts to represent their constituents. Just
12
as these lawmakers are more likely to make floor speeches (Hill and Hurley 2002; Maltzman and
Sigelman 1996), they are also more likely to engage bipartisanship in the speeches they make.
Figure 5: Summarizing the Systematic Differences in Bipartisan Discussion
Marginality
●
Leadership
●
0
10
20
30
Change in Amount of
Bipartisan Discussion
The points in the figure are the mean of the differences across groups or the difference in means
associated with shifts in characteristics, while the lines are 95 percent confidence intervals for the
mean.
Discussion of bipartisanship is a strategy for those in leadership and those who are marginal,
but does this engagement relate to actual bipartisan behavior and legislator effectiveness? Figure
6 shows that measures of bipartisan behavior (votes and co-sponsorship) are not related to discussion of bipartisanship. Rates of voting with a representative’s own party has no effect on a
representative’s quantity of bipartisan discussion (b=0.04, 95% confidence interval [-0.04, 0.12]).
The number of bills co-sponsored with members of the political opposition also has no relationship with bipartisan discussion (b=-0.00, 95% confidence interval [-0.00, 0.00]). This is additional
evidence that bipartisan discussion is a tactical move and not an indication of eventual bipartisan
action. Discussion of bipartisanship is, however, related to overall legislative effectiveness. Using the congressional effectiveness measure developed by Volden, Wiseman, and Wittmer (2013)
(bottom of Figure 6), I show that more effective legislators make more appeals to bipartisanship
(b=1.57, 95% confidence interval [1.03, 2.10])6 .
6 Again, it is important to note that I cannot determine the causal direction of this relationship, but with experimental
data I show how the strategic use of bipartisanship changes voter perceptions of legislation.
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Figure 6: The Minimal Relationship Between Bipartisan Discussion and Bipartisan Behavior
Legislator Effectiveness
Cosponsorship with opposition
Unity vote
●
●
●
0.0
0.5
1.0
1.5
2.0
Change in Amount of
Bipartisan Discussion
The points in the figure are the mean of the differences across groups or the difference in means
associated with shifts in characteristics, while the lines are 95 percent confidence intervals for the
mean.
How Representatives Discuss Bipartisanship
Prior work looks at what kinds of legislation is most likely to get bipartisan votes (see Trubowitz
and Mellow 2005), but we know very little about how representatives incorporate bipartisan assertions into their representational strategies. I classify bipartisan rhetoric into four categories
derived from existing models of representative behavior: vote seeking (looking for other representatives to support “bipartisan” legislation), seeking bipartisan action (looking for a bipartisan
solution/action), credit claiming past action deemed “bipartisan,” and other general discussion of
bipartisanship. This typology captures how representative discuss bipartisanship throughout the
life-cycle of a policy: from the identification of a problem in need of a legislative solution, to a bill
needing votes to pass, to claims of responsibility for a passed bill.
The first category captures attempts to get votes for legislation the representative asserts is
bipartisan. Representative Deborah Pryce (R-OH, 15th), for example, urges her colleagues to back
what she labels a bipartisan bill: “...I urge all my colleagues to support this straightforward rule and
the bipartisan bill which it backs up” (Pryce 2001). The second category identifies instances where
representatives seek bipartisan actions. In one example from this category, Representative Lloyd
Doggett (D-TX, 10th) talks of the need for bipartisan campaign finance reform: “I believe we
need bipartisan solutions on this issue, just like every other one that concerns campaign finance”
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(Doggett 2002). The third category identifies claiming credit for bipartisan behavior. An example
of this comes from Representative Rick Renzi (R-AZ, 1st): “I thank the gentlewoman from New
York (Mrs. Maloney) and particularly want to thank the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Snyder)
for pulling together the support, the vast amount of support on a bipartisan basis to recognize the
pain and suffering the Little Rock Nine have given to move this country forward” (Renzi 2005).
The final category captures general discussion of bipartisanship on the floor of the House.
I classify the set of sentences engaging bipartisanship using a Support Vector Machine (SVM)
model (Steinwart and Christmann 2008; Joachims 1998; Diermeier, Godbout, Yu, and Kaufmann
2012) as implemented by scikit-learn (Pedregosa, Varoquaux, Gramfort, Michel, Thirion, Grisel,
Blondel, Prettenhofer, Weiss, Dubourg, Vanderplas, Passos, Cournapeau, Brucher, Perrot, and
Duchesnay 2011). The model was trained to classify text using a random sample of 970 human
coded instances of bipartisan discussion extracted from the Congressional Record (see Grimmer
and Stewart 2013). Algorithm performance, measured with 10-fold cross validation, was robust.
The mean precision of the classifier for all classes was 0.751, while recall was 0.737.
Legislators use floor speeches to associate themselves with bipartisanship and to associate bipartisanship with legislation. Figure 7 shows how representatives discuss bipartisanship in the
104th through the 111th Congresses. The majority of bipartisan discussion engages specific problems or bills. When legislators craft messages for the House floor, the status of their party significantly changes behavior. Members of the party in control of the House more frequently issue
calls for members to support legislation because they say it is bipartisan (28.9% versus 23.4%)
and claim credit for passing bipartisan legislation more often (26.2% versus 22.9%). The majority
uses bipartisanship to gather support and claim credit for legislation they are advancing through
the House. Minority members—unable to set the legislative agenda, but still wanting to appeal
to bipartisanship on the record—resort to more symbolic and general discussion of bipartisanship.
While majority members increase discussion of bipartisanship as a justification for supporting legislation, the minority party increase pleas for bipartisan action/solutions (10.4% versus 9.3%) and
engage in more general discussion of bipartisanship (43.2% versus 35.4%). Without the opportu-
15
nity to set legislative priorities or determine floor votes, the minority party is more likely to discuss
bipartisanship without connection to specific legislation (i.e., general statements on the usefulness
of bipartisanship, need for bipartisanship on legislation central to the minority party’s legislative
agenda, or condemnation for a lack of bipartisan behavior by the majority). The malleability of
the definition of bipartisanship allows both the majority and the minority to gain from bipartisan
appeals.
Figure 7: How Representatives Use Bipartisanship
●
●
Vote seeking
●
●
● ●
●
●
Need Bipartisan Action
●
●
Bipartisan Credit Claim
●
●
●
●
Genderal Discussion
0.0
0.1
0.2
0.3
●
●
0.4
0.5
Proportion of Bipartisan Discussion
● Majority Party ●
● Minority Party
Party ●
The points in the figure are proportions within each category.
Representatives use floor speeches to take positions on issues, to advertise, and to claim credit
(Mayhew 1974), but when engaging bipartisanship, representatives are more likely to declare bipartisan positions, ascribe bipartisan positions or request bipartisanship than to claim credit for
bipartisanship. Harbridge and Malhotra (2011) show that although constituents support bipartisanship in the aggregate, actual bipartisan behavior by a representative decreases support among
strong partisans. Consistent with these findings, over 76% of bipartisan discussion is about legislation in progress where representatives can claim they are working for bipartisan ends but not fear
the consequences of actual compromise.
Bipartisan Rhetoric and Bipartisan Votes
Bipartisan rhetoric is often disconnected from actual votes. I find that there isn’t a strong
relationship between the actual coalition supporting a bill and the propensity to label it bipartisan.
16
Nearly half of all discussion of bipartisanship in the House references specific legislation that is
eventually put to a vote. I match discussion of bipartisanship to a specific bill debated in the
House. Then I determine how many members of the minority party voted in support of each bill
in the final House vote. Combining these data, Figure 8 shows that bipartisan discussion is most
common for legislation that gains no or minimal support from the minority and for legislation that
attracts overwhelming support from both parties. Indeed, the largest amount of bipartisan talk
focuses on bills that advance with minimal winning coalitions.
Figure 8: The Minimal Relationship Between Discussion of Bill Bipartisanship
and Minority “Yea” Votes
log(Mentions)
4
3
2
1
0
50
100
150
200
Minority "Yea" Votes
This figure shows that bipartisan rhetoric does not relate to bipartisan votes. Talking about bipartisanship is not restricted to legislation that pulls support from both parties. The line is a GAM
curve and the shaded areas surrounding the curve is the 95% confidence interval. The y-axis in the
logged number of mentions for each bill.
Experimental Evidence: Strategic Bipartisanship and Constituent
Attitudes
The first section in this paper shows how representatives make bipartisan assertions while engaging in the act of representation. With three experiments I show how and why constituents are
17
responsive to legislator appeals to bipartisanship. Specifically, I show how assertions of bipartisanship alter opinions toward legislation. Framing legislation as bipartisan causes constituents
to perceive legislation as more moderate and increases public support for the legislation. Representatives who ascribe bipartisanship to the opposition or describe legislation as bipartisan, I
demonstrate, successfully change constituent attitudes.
Study 1: Asserted Bipartisanship Increases Support
To build bipartisan impressions among voters, representatives classify a large percentage of
their votes and actions as bipartisan. Even those on the extreme right and left position their work
and the legislation they support as bipartisan. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is among the most conservative
members of the current Senate, with an estimated ideal point of 1.45 (Jackman N.d.). Among all
senators Cruz is 69th in writing bills that attract at least one Democratic co-sponsor and is 42nd
in joining legislation written by a Democrat as a co-sponsor (GovTrack.com 2014). Yet, as of
November 2014, 18.4% of Cruz’s official press releases characterize his opinions and actions as
bipartisan. He goes so far as to blame the government shutdown of 2013 on Senate Democrats
who refused to accept a “bipartisan bill” from the House that did not contain funding for the
Affordable Care Act (Cruz 2013).Democrats also engage in this kind of behavior. For example, the
liberal senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) -1.03 (Jackman N.d.), ranks 55th for writing legislation
attracting a Republican co-sponsor and ranks 94th in joining legislation written by a Republican as
a co-sponsor (GovTrack.com 2014). Nonetheless, 8% of press releases from Mr. Whitehouse taut
bipartisanship.
Members of Congress craft statements to position legislation as bipartisan to gain support and
to appear more ideologically centrist, even when the legislation is overtly partisan. One reason
officials position partisan legislation as bipartisan, I show with this study, is that the strategic use
of the term causes constituents to perceive legislation as more moderate. Constituents, with little
information on the legislative history for most bills use assertions of bipartisanship to formulate
assessments of the ideological extremity of legislation. For example, Republican Representative
Todd Tiahrt (R-KA, 4th) told the floor that “[he looks] forward to continuing our bipartisan work
18
to pass the rest of the Contract With America” (Tiahrt 1995).
To demonstrate the effects of bipartisanship on constituent support and ideological perceptions
I construct a simple 2 x 2 experiment (see Table 1). A sample (N=1,206) of adults recruited from
Survey Sampling International (SSI) participants read a contrived floor speech from the leader of
the opposing party.
7
The speech, on infrastructure legislation8 , randomly included information that detailed an
overtly partisan plan (reducing entitlement spending to increase infrastructure spending from Republicans, or increasing the gas tax to increase infrastructure spending from Democrats) or offered
no specific details. Participants were also randomly assigned to read a speech that included a
bipartisan assertion (a single mention of the word bipartisan) or a speech with no mention of bipartisanship (see the supporting materials for the stimuli). After reading the floor speech participants
indicated their level of support for the legislation on a 7-point Oppose to Support scale. The dependent variable is support for the policy and not Congress as a body, which is distinct from prior
work on how constituents change evaluations of Congress after reading about bipartisan talk on
the floor.
Table 1: Study 1 Treatments
Partisan detail
Bipartisanship
Overtly partisan plan
Overtly partisan plan
+ called bipartisan
+ not called bipartisan
Not overtly partisan plan Not overtly partisan plan
+ called bipartisan
+ not called bipartisan
Both legislation with overtly partisan purposes (cutting entitlements/increasing gas taxes) and
legislation from opposing partisans without an overtly partisan component gain significant support when characterized as bipartisan . Overtly partisan legislation that is portrayed as bipartisan
gets more support than the same policy presented with no mention of bipartisanship (mean dif7 Following Harbridge and Malhotra (2011),
leaners were treated as partisans. Independents and non-partisans with
no partisan leanings were randomly assigned to read a speech from the Democrat or from the Republican.
8 Infrastructure projects were selected as highway spending is not a common source of public partisan disagreement,
which mitigates concerns of pre-treatment effects.
19
ference=.35, 95% confidence interval [.13, .57]). Support for legislation that is not presented as
explicitly partisan is also significantly higher in the bipartisan treatment than the treatment without
mention of bipartisanship (mean difference=.28, 95% confidence interval [.03, .54]).
Participants also placed the legislation on a 7-point liberal to conservative scale. A distance
variable was constructed by taking the absolute value of the difference between the reported ideological assessment of the legislation and the scale midpoint (4). Voters perceive legislation Representatives position as bipartisan as significantly more moderate than identical legislation positioned
without a claim of bipartisanship (mean difference=-0.35, 95% confidence interval [-0.48, -0.23]).
The proportion of participants placing the legislation at the ideological midpoint in the bipartisan
condition increases by 18.39% compared to the not bipartisan condition. When the legislation
is overtly partisan this difference is no longer detectable (mean difference=-.07, 95% confidence
interval of the difference [-0.22, 0.08], though given the strength of the treatments this is not surprising. Liberals should view cutting entitlements as conservative and conservatives should view
increasing taxes as liberal.
Constituents interpret bipartisanship as a positive cue when evaluating legislation. For constituents these interpretations are rational: bipartisanship is commonly understood as an indication
of collaboration and compromise. Legislators successfully change perceptions of legislation by
merely associating it with the label bipartisan. Most Americans, unaware of the details and nuances of the legislative process are poorly positioned to check this behavior.
Study 2: Gains from Asserted Bipartisanship Trump Returns from CoalitionBuilding
The second experiment shows that legislation does not actually require meaningful support
from the political opposition to get a bipartisan bump from constituents, and that there is a minimal return for building large coalitions above what constituents allocate to actions merely labeled
bipartisan. Politicians who work to buy support for legislation with a minimal winning coalition
(e.g. Riker 1962; Banks 2000; Snyder 1991) can, I show, reap nearly the same return from pealing one representative from the opposition as peeling 100 representatives. Constituents respond to
20
the assertion of bipartisanship and perceived implications of the concept more than they do actual
support from the opposition. Indeed, legislators are able to gain support for legislation where only
a single member of the opposition votes with the majority.
Table 2: Study 2 Treatments
Bipartisan + random(1-100)
Democrat votes
Treatment Arms
Important + random(1-100)
Democrat votes
Partisan + 0 Democrat
votes
I use a dose-response experiment with three treatment arms administered to a sample of 1,202
drawn from SSI to test the effects of bipartisan rhetoric (see Table 2). In this design a random
number of Democratic representatives are reported to vote for a piece of legislation, with this number drawn from a uniform distribution ranging between 1 and 100. In the first treatment 40% of
respondents were randomly assigned to read a news article indicating that legislation had passed
the House, that Republicans call the legislation bipartisan, and that a random number of Democrats
actually voted in support of the legislation. A possible concern is that the term bipartisan merely
conveys positive valance. To address this concern a second treatment arm (40% of respondents)
contained text from Republicans calling the legislation “important” instead of “bipartisan.” Again
a random number of Democrats between 1 and 100 were reported to support the bill. To get a
baseline measure of support and ideological placement for partisan legislation, I randomly assigned 20% of respondents to read a treatment where no Democrats supported a Republican bill.9
In this condition Republicans made no attempt to present the bill as bipartisan. This design facilitates several important comparisons. First, I can measure the increase in support for a bill when
moving from the partisan to the bipartisan treatment. Secondly, I can compare this increase in
support (movement from partisan to bipartisan with 1 Democrat), to the increase in support when
a single Democrat peels away from her party to support a Republican policy and when a massive
Democratic coalition supports a bill. Finally, I can compare the effects of labeling a bill with a
generic positive term to the effects of asserting bipartisanship.
9 Participants
were randomly assigned to each of the three treatment arms.
21
The treatments (see supporting materials for full stimuli) are delivered in a single paragraph
(from a total of six) that varies the presentation of the bill, ostensibly from a Republican spokesperson. The article does not announce a bipartisan or partisan bill, it merely reports that legislation
has passed the house and includes a quote from a Republican spokesperson containing an assertion
of bipartisanship or importance. The news article, by reporting the actual number of Democrats
voting for the legislation, contextualizes the Republican framing with a quantitative indicator of
Democratic support of the legislation.10 The treatment also positions the bill as conservative: cutting government oversight on federally managed lands.
Figure 9 shows the effects of the three treatment arms and the randomly assigned number
of Democratic representatives voting for the legislation on support for the legislation (LOESS
curves and 95% confidence intervals for the bipartisan and important arms; the mean from the
partisan condition and its 95% confidence interval is also plotted). Presenting a bill as bipartisan,
even when only a single Democrat voted for the bill increases public support by 21.17% from the
partisan treatment (mean=3.98, 95% confidence interval [3.81, 4.16]) to the bipartisan treatment
with 1 Democratic supporter (mean=4.83, 95% confidence interval [4.62, 5.05]). This difference is
massively larger than the increase in public support when the bill is reported to garner the support
of 100 Democrats (mean=5.09, 95% confidence interval [4.89, 5.30])—an increase in support of
5.41% above the return from peeling a single Democrat. Put another way, each Democratic vote
above 1 increases support by only .003 units on the Oppose-Support scale. Constituents are far
more responsive to the assertion of bipartisanship than actual bipartisan votes. This is true even
when they view clear quantitative evidence that Democratic support was minimal.
Asserting that legislation is bipartisan has a clear advantage over stressing the importance of
legislation. Constituents, when the number of Democrats actually supporting a bill is small, are
more responsive to implied compromise than claims of importance. When 8 or fewer Democrats
vote to support legislation, assertions of bipartisanship deliver a significant support bonus over assertions of importance, with the two assertions equalizing as the number of Democratic supporters
10 To
minimize pre-treatment effects I use a relatively obscure agency in the federal bureaucracy.
22
increases.
The majority of congressional votes gain large support from both parties, with a mean of 99.3
Democrats voting “yea” on passage votes in the 114th Congress. However, contested legislation in
the 114th Congress is often only supported by a small number of Democrats. The vertical dotted
lines in Figure 9 (A) show the percent of contested votes by number of Democrats crossing the
aisle. Slightly over 51.3% of contested votes gain the support of 8 or fewer Democrats, meaning
that bipartisan claims offer meaningful returns for the majority of contested legislation in the US
House.
Figure 9: Asserted Bipartisanship, Actual Bipartisanship and Public Support
Support for Legislation
(B)
(A)
6
●
5
●
5.41%
more
support
4
●
21.17%
more
support
75.2% of votes
51.3% of votes
Number of Democrats Voting for Budget
Condition
"Bipartisan" Bill
"Important" Bill
Partisan Bill
(0 Democrats)
"Bipartisan" Bill
+ 100 Democrats
10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100
"Bipartisan" Bill
+ 1 Democrat
25.7% of votes
5
Partisan Bill
(0 Democrats)
3
(A) Shows that bipartisan assertions increase support compared to partisan bills, and that bipartisan
assertions are significantly more effective than claims of importance for more than 50% of house
votes. The lines are LOESS curves with 95% confidence intervals. (B) Shows the increase in
support from the partisan condition to the bipartisan condition with 1 Democratic vote and from
the bipartisan condition with 1 democratic vote and the same treatment with 100 Democratic votes.
The points are values from an OLS regression model and the bars are 95% confidence intervals.
Replicating results from Study 1, constituents consistently perceive legislation presented as
23
bipartisan as more ideologically neutral than legislation presented as partisan. Figure 10 (A)
shows LOESS curves, with the mean from the partisan condition and its 95% confidence interval. A Republican spokesperson calling a bill bipartisan—even with only one Democratic vote of
support—moves ideological perceptions of a bill from clearly conservative in the partisan treatment
(mean=5.44, 95% confidence interval [5.30, 5.58]) to near the midpoint in the Bipartisan condition
(mean=4.56, 95% confidence interval [4.39, 4.72]). This represents a decrease in conservativeness
of 16.24%. Picking up an additional 99 Democratic votes moves perceived ideological perceptions of the bill even closer to the ideological midpoint, but the return for adding 99 Democratic
is smaller (mean=4.16, 95% confidence interval [4.00, 4.32]) than adding a single Democrat—an
additional shift of only 8.73%. Put another way, each Democratic vote above 1 decreases perceived
conservativeness by .004 units on the Liberal-Conservative scale.
Presenting a bill as bipartisan does more to change ideological perceptions than assertions of
importance. If a bill pulls 8 or fewer Democrats across the aisle, a claim of bipartisanship is more
effective at changing ideological perceptions than importance. The two assertions equalize as the
number of Democratic supporters increases, but remain significantly different from the partisan
condition.
I again contextualize the usefulness of bipartisan assertions by showing the percent of contested
votes by number of Democrats crossing the aisle (the vertical dotted lines in Figure 10 B). Calling
legislation bipartisan is advantageous for the majority of contested bills in the US House when it
comes how ideologically extreme voters view the legislation.
Attention to the Treatments
One concern is that participants were inattentive to the treatment and did not pay attention
to the number of Democrats voting with Republicans. After reporting support for the legislation
and indicating placement on the ideological spectrum, participants were asked to allocate responsibility for the bill between Democrats and Republicans using a tool that forced the amount of
responsibility to sum to 100%. Figure 11 shows that the percent of responsibility allocated to the
Democratic party (y-axis) increases as the percent of Democrats reported to vote for the legis24
lation increases.11 Reported responsibility increases at approximately the same rate for both the
bipartisan and important treatments.
Surprisingly, even when no Democrats were reported to vote for the bill (the partisan treatment), participants allocated nearly 30% of responsibility to Democrats. To probe this finding I
conducted an additional study. A sample from Mechanical Turk (n=116) read the partisan treatment and after answering the responsibility question those giving more than 0% of responsibility to
Democrats (68.97% of participants) were asked an additional open-ended question: “You allocated
X% of the responsibility for this bill to Democrats. In a few sentences please explain why you feel
the Democrats were this responsible.”12 Two human readers classified the responses, identifying
two clear reasons. First, 30% of participants indicated that Democrats are responsible because—
despite not voting for the bill—they are part of Congress: “Because they are still apart(sic) of the
decision process. and must have had some influence on the bill ...” and “They showed up.” A
second group—33% of participants—indicated that Democrats are responsible for the bill because
they failed to stop the Republicans from pushing the bill through the house: “The Democrats, being in the minority, likely did not oppose the bill strongly enough, and did not push enough for
what they would have wanted in the bill...” and “Apparently they did NOT campaign actively to
defeat the budget passing—that alone is worth some credit!”
Participants allocate large levels of responsibility to Democrats even when Democrats uniformly oppose legislation because constituents view Democrats as a part of the system that produces legislation and because passage of a Republican bill indicates that Democrats failed to block
the Republican measure.
Tricking the Politically Uninformed?
Another concern is that assertions of bipartisanship are only effective because they influence
the opinions of the politically uninformed. To test for a political innocence effect the full sample of
1,202 participants answered a congressional knowledge battery after completing the experiment.
11 In
the experiment the number of Democrats was limited to 100, which is just over 50% of the 188 Democrats
currently in the House of Representatives.
12 The supporting materials provide additional information on this study.
25
The battery contained three knowledge questions taken directly from a United States citizenship
study guide maintained by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services 2013: 1) “The
House of Representatives has how many voting members,” 2) “We elect a U.S. Representative for
how many years” and 3) “How many Representatives can you vote for in the 2016 election?” Each
question was open response. The three items were coded for correctness and combined into a
single congressional knowledge index.
Figure 12 shows the mean level of support in each of the three treatment arms (pooling over
the number of randomly assigned Democratic votes). Those with the most knowledge responded
no differently from those with the lowest knowledge in all three treatment arms. A lack of understanding of how Congress works does not explain why assertions of bipartisanship are effective.
This is consistent with how constituents respond to and understand federal expenditures and congressional credit claiming (Grimmer, Messing, and Westwood 2012; Grimmer, Westwood, and
Messing 2014).
Study 3: Refutation and Inoculation
Constituents are responsive to assertions of bipartisanship by congressional leaders and by
spokespeople, but do claims of bipartisanship backfire when the opposing party contests them?
The majority of assertions of bipartisanship by members of Congress come in forums where refutation is not likely. The structure of the House makes it difficult to rebut or even respond to floor
speeches in a timely or direct way. Similarly, when positioning legislation in press releases, in
direct constituent communication, campaign ads, or through social media, communication is entirely manged by a single person or party. It is possible to refute or contest these assertions but
there is no guarantee that the original audience will attend to or care about the refutations—even
on social media there is no guarantee that the followers of one politician will see responses from
another politician. Nevertheless, traditional media does create a platform where reporters seek out
and present perspectives on legislation from both parties.
This experiment tests how refuted claims of bipartisanship change constituent evaluations of
legislation and if refutation effects persist over time. A sample from Mechanical Turk (n=717)
26
Table 3: Study 3 Treatments
Time 1
Time 2
Randomly Assigned Treatment Arm
Refutation
Partisan (T1 control)
Partisan (T2 Control)
Dept. Interior article,
Dept. Interior article,
Demographics only
bipartisan + refutation
not bipartisan + no refutation
Water treatment article,
Water treatment article,
–
bipartisan + no refutation
bipartisan + no refutation
were randomly assigned to three conditions over two time points (stimuli are included in the supporting materials). In the first condition participants read a version of the treatment from Study 2
with the following text inserted between the third and fourth paragraphs: “When asked for comment Democratic Spokesperson Ken Miller said, ‘Republicans are presenting a conservative bill
as a centrist compromise. The budget is outside the mainstream and Republicans know it.”’ This
strong refutation correctly characterizes the bill as conservative, calls claims of centrism incorrect
and implies dishonesty by Republicans. These same participants completed a follow-up survey 21
days later containing a news article asserting bipartisanship on water clarity (see the supporting
materials for full stimuli).13 In the second condition participants read the partisan treatment from
Study 2 with no refutation. In the third condition participants completed a basic questionnaire with
demographic measures at T1 and then 21 days later were invited to a follow-up survey containing
the article asserting bipartisanship on water clarity. With this design I can test the effects of refutation on assertions of bipartisanship compared to the effects of exposure to a partisan treatment. I
can also test how participants respond to a claim of bipartisanship after exposure to a refuted claim,
versus those only exposed to the unrefuted claim. Because the major changes in observed attitudes
in Study 2 occurred when 25 or fewer Democrats voted to support legislation the randomly drawn
number of Democrats voting in support of the legislation ranged between 1 and 25 in this study.
Figure 13 shows how constituents respond to refuted bipartisan assertions. The means and
95% confidence intervals for each variable from the partisan condition are also plotted. Refutation
removes the support bonus (Figure 13 A), but there is no detectable penalty for misrepresenting the
13 Approximately
67% of participants recruited at T1 completed T2. T2 responses were not related to T1 conditions
or demographic variables, see Supporting Materials.
27
vote. Constituents are just as responsive to a partisan bill as they are to a bill with refuted claims
of bipartisanship. Thus representatives have every incentive to assert bipartisanship whenever
possible.
Refutation increases reported distance from the midpoint on the ideological spectrum for legislation, but refuted claims of bipartisanship still effectively decrease the perceived conservativeness
of legislation, even when only a handful of Democrats actually voted for the legislation (Figure 13
B). But there is evidence that participants read and recalled the number of democrats reported to
vote for the legislation (Figure 13 C).
With no detectable penalty for mischaracterizing legislation as bipartisan, the chance that representatives can get away with the assertion unchallenged, and the fact that even refuted assertions
of bipartisanship make legislation seem more ideologically neutral, it is clear that there is a real
incentive for representatives to assert bipartisanship. This is especially true for marginal representatives who need to appeal to the political opposition to secure reelection.
Refuted Assertions of Bipartisanship Do Not Change Responses to Additional
Assertions of Bipartisanship
Refutation decreases responsiveness to asserted bipartisanship, but does exposure to a refuted
claim change how participants evaluate future assertions of bipartisanship? Put another way, are
participants exposed to refuted bipartisan claims inoculated from further misdirection? Three
weeks after completing the T1 survey, the 498 participants assigned to the refutation condition
and the T2 bipartisan condition received invitations to participate in a follow-up survey.. In this
follow-up participants read the news article covering water quality legislation with a claim of bipartisanship and with no refutation. The comparison is then between those exposed to refuted
bipartisanship in the past and those never exposed to a refuted bipartisan assertion.
Results (Figure 14) show that there is no observable inoculation effect from exposure to a
refuted bipartisan claim. Participants are just as responsive to a second claim of bipartisanship
after exposure to a refuted claim as those who never saw a refuted claim.
28
Discussion
Voters support increasingly ideologically extreme politicians but also expect bipartisan governance (see Pew 2012, 2007). Faced with this dilemma, representatives push through legislation—
which is sometimes overtly partisan—and position it as bipartisan, using minimal support from
across the aisle to justify these claims. Because it is difficult for even the most politically motivated to follow the details and history of legislation moving through Congress, constituents rely on
information from their representatives to make evaluations on the processes of lawmaking. This
allows representatives to cultivate specific impressions on the status and history of legislation. Consistent with impressionistic models of constituent decision-making (see Grimmer, Westwood, and
Messing 2014), I show that representatives position legislation as bipartisan and that constituents
respond to these characterizations. And so, in a partisan climate even claims about bipartisanship
are often made with partisan intent.
Bipartisan positioning is a representational strategy observable in official acts of representation
on the floor of the House and in reports by the media. Bipartisan rhetoric is both common for
representatives across the ideological spectrum and disconnected from actual bipartisan behavior
(crossing party lines in votes or co-sponsoring legislation with a member of the opposition). Bipartisan assertions are related to the power of a member’s political party and the marginality of
the member. Both the amount of bipartisan discussion and the way it is discussed varies by the
majority/minority status of a representative’s party. Marginal representatives are also more likely
to discuss bipartisanship as these members must maneuver to gain support from independents and
opposition party members while also maintaining support from within their own party.
I experimentally show that bipartisan assertions are not simply cheap talk. I show that the public positively evaluates bipartisanship, even if they cannot explain exactly what it means. However,
constituents are not merely reacting to a positive term, as they are more responsive to assertions of
bipartisanship than to appeals made with other positively valanced terms (Study 2). Voters understand bipartisanship as a signal of legislative quality (Krehbiel 1992) and compromise (Trubowitz
and Mellow 2005), even when actual vote counts don’t show evidence of compromise or broad
29
support. Indeed, representatives can actually gain more from assertions of bipartisanship than
from obtaining actual support from the political opposition. Documenting or detailing actual compromises reduces public support among strong partisans (Morris and Witting 2001; Harbridge and
Malhotra 2011; Harbridge, Malhotra, and Harrison 2014; Harbridge 2014), but I show that falsely
asserting bipartisanship (indicated through refutation and a low number of votes from the opposing party) does not lead to a penalty in the eyes of voters. In this way, representatives have more
to fear from detailed summaries of legislative policy than from masquerading as champions of
compromise.
Marginal legislators reliant on support from moderate opposing partisans and political independents are particularly likely to assert bipartisanship. Thus legislators can exploit the moderate
political attitudes of constituents and consistent public support for bipartisan compromise (Pew
2012, 2007) by using the concept of bipartisanship strategically and without evidence of actual
compromise. These results are coldly rational: through bipartisan assertions, representatives can
obtain the advantages of appearing moderate without the risks associated with actual cross-aisle
compromise. Increasing bipartisan perceptions while simultaneously avoiding bipartisan action
(votes and co-sponsorship) gives these representatives the maximal advantage at a minimal cost.
These findings suggest that past research, by focusing on the details of legislative compromises (Harbridge and Malhotra 2011; Harbridge, Malhotra, and Harrison 2014; Harbridge 2014),
captures how constituents respond when presented with detailed accounts of congressional action.
The reality of sound-bite news coverage (Hallin 1992) and the decline of in-depth congressional
reporting on news television—the largest source of news on Congress for most Americans (Mann
and Ornstein 1994; Hibbing and Theiss-Morse 1998; Lichter and Amundson 1994)—makes evaluations of Congressional action with incomplete and superficial coverage increasingly likely.
Implications of this research are clear. The current partisan atmosphere in Congress turns the
concept of agreement into a tool for political gain. For constituents, this introduces uncertainty,
which limits democratic accountability. Broad and often unjustified claims of bipartisanship makes
it difficult for constituents to understand and correctly evaluate the behaviors, intentions and actual
30
positions of Congress. Simply put, it is hard for constituents to assess if something called bipartisan
is actually bipartisan.
Most citizens are generally inattentive to the processes of governance, and respond to bipartisanship because they “seem to expect Congress, magically, to mold sometimes bitterly divided
public opinion into coherent and effective policy without debate, disagreement or compromise”
(Hibbing and Theiss-Morse 1995, p xii). By setting expectations of bipartisanship by telling voters
that they are passing bipartisan legislation, representatives increase expectations of efficacy and
compromise that simply do not materialize in their voting behavior. Although constituents are responsive to the strategic use bipartisanship, the fact that legislators claim it and then fail to deliver
unifying legislation may explain increasingly negative evaluations of Congress.
Ironically, the strategic use of bipartisanship by representatives likely disincentivizes political
compromise. Because elected officials use even minimal opposition support to claim bipartisan
legitimacy, pulling legislators from across the aisle in small numbers has out-sized effects. This
is one explanation for the obstructionist behavior of the Republican party during the Obama administration. Exceptions to uniform opposition to the administration—even by a small number of
legislators—give meaningful political power to the administration.
There are several avenues for extending this research. First, the observational text analysis
establishes many relationships—some tested experimentally in this paper—but future research
should explore the direct causal relationship between representative traits and bipartisan discussion. Interviews and case studies with members of Congress would also lend additional support
and clarification to the evidence presented in this paper. Finally, future work should explore the
relationship between bipartisan discussion and constituent evaluations over time to measure the
decay of the effects of bipartisan rhetoric.
These results show that concept of bipartisanship is now another source of partisan division.
When it comes to evaluating assertions of bipartisan compromise, voters trust the information they
receive from political actors. Voters may not be “fools” (see Key and Cummings 1966) but they
are—at least when it comes to evaluating claims of bipartisan compromise—easy to fool.
31
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Figure 10: Asserted Bipartisanship, Actual Bipartisanship and Ideological Perceptions
Legislaton's Ideological Placement
(B)
(A)
6
●
5
●
16.24%
less
conservative
4
●
8.73%
less
conservative
75.2% of votes
51.3% of votes
Number of Democrats Voting for Budget
Condition
"Bipartisan" Bill
"Important" Bill
Partisan Bill
(0 Democrats)
"Bipartisan" Bill
+ 100 Democrats
10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100
"Bipartisan" Bill
+ 1 Democrat
25.7% of votes
5
Partisan Bill
(0 Democrats)
3
(A) Shows that bipartisan assertions decrease perceived conservativeness compared to partisan
bills, and that bipartisan assertions reduce perceived conservativeness compared to claims of importance for more than 50% of house votes. The lines are LOESS curves with 95% confidence
intervals. (B) Shows the decrease in perceived ideological extremity from the partisan condition
to the bipartisan condition with 1 Democratic vote and from the bipartisan condition with 1 democratic vote and the same treatment with 100 Democratic votes. The points are means from an OLS
regression model and the bars are 95% confidence intervals.
37
Figure 11: Perceived Democratic Responsibility by Proportion of Democratic
Votes
Percent of Responsibility Allocated
to Democrats
"Bipartisan" Bill
"Important" Bill
50
40
30
20
10
10
20
30
40
50
10
20
30
40
50
Percent of Democrats Reported to
Vote for the Legislation
Condition
"Bipartisan" Bill
"Important" Bill
Partisan Bill
(0 Democrats)
This figure shows the percentage of responsibility allocated to Democrats by the percent percent of
Democrats reported to vote for the legislation. The lines are LOESS curves with 95% confidence
intervals.
Congressional Knoweldge
Index (3 item)
Figure 12: Response to treatment arms by Congressional knowledge
"Bipartisan" Bill
100%
●
66%
●
33%
"Important" Bill
●
4
5
●
●
●
3
●
●
●
0%
Partisan Bill (0 Democrats)
●
●
6
3
4
5
●
6
3
4
5
6
Support for Legislation
The points are means and the bars are 95% confidence intervals. The dotted vertical line is the cell
mean.
38
(A)
6
Support for Legislation
Legislaton's Ideological Placement
Figure 13: How Constituents Respond to Refuted Bipartisan Claims
5
4
3
5
10
15
20
25
5
4
3
Number of Democrats Voting for Budget
Partisan Bill
(0 Democrats)
Percent of Responsibility Allocated
to Democrats
Condition
(B)
6
5
10
15
20
25
Number of Democrats Voting for Budget
Refuted
Condition
Partisan Bill
(0 Democrats)
Refuted
(C)
50
40
30
20
10
0
5
10
Percent of Democrats Reported to
Vote for the Legislation
Condition
Partisan Bill
(0 Democrats)
Refuted
(A) Shows how perceived ideological placement for legislation varies by treatment arm and by the
number of Democrats reported to vote for the legislation. (B) Shows the decrease in perceived
ideological extremity from the partisan condition to the bipartisan condition with 1 Democratic
vote and from the bipartisan condition with 1 democratic vote and the same treatment with 100
Democratic votes. (C) This shows the percentage of responsibility allocated to Democrats by the
percent percent of Democrats reported to vote for the legislation. The lines are LOESS curves with
95% confidence intervals.
39
(A)
Support for Legislation
6
5
4
3
5
10
15
20
25
Number of Democrats Voting for Budget
Condition
Bipartisan (T2) and Refuted (T1)
Legislaton's Ideological Placement
Figure 14: Responses to Bipartisan Claims Following Refuted Claims and No
Prior Claims
(B)
6
5
4
3
5
10
15
20
25
Number of Democrats Voting for Budget
Bipartisan (T2)
Condition
The points are means and the bars are 95% confidence intervals.
40
Bipartisan (T2) and Refuted (T1)
Bipartisan (T2)