Conservatives in the next House of Representatives will be more conservative and its liberals more liberal.
The Upshot calculated changes between this Congress and the one that will be seated in January using an ideological measure developed by Crowdpac, a site that tries to match voters to candidates who fit their issues based on campaign contributions, votes and statements.
It makes sense that more Republicans in the House would yield a more conservative House over all. But an expanded conservative majority doesn’t necessarily mean Republicans will get whatever they want. There were times in the current Congress when House leaders struggled to advance legislation that enjoyed bipartisan support but faced opposition from many of the most conservative lawmakers. In some cases, House Speaker John Boehner relied on Democratic votes to pass legislation that a majority of Republicans opposed.
More conservative members can be expected to produce more conservative legislation that would pass the House, particularly with a Republican-led Senate in place next year. But it also could force some of the new Republicans who won previously Democratic seats to take tough votes that could be used against them in the 2016 campaign.
Credit Eugene Tanner/Associated Press
For Democrats, a more liberal caucus, and the loss of moderate and conservative Democrats who routinely provided votes for Republican bills, could make it harder for House leaders to construct legislation designed to attract Democratic support. The dozens of votes the House has held to repeal or defund all or parts of the Affordable Care Act usually picked up some Democratic votes, but many of the people who did so will be gone in 2015.
The Crowdpac scores are on a scale of negative 10 for most liberal to 10 for most conservative. Even with 14 seats still remaining to be decided in the 435-member body, the average score for current or previous lawmakers in all House districts where results were known on Wednesday morning was 0.72, or marginally conservative. For the incoming members it was 1.05.
The New House Will Shift Toward Extremes
The ideological scores for current lawmakers and those elected on Tuesday show that liberals became slightly more liberal and conservatives became noticeably more conservative whether they won a seat from the opposing party or replaced a retiring member of the same party.
In 12 of the 20 seats where a retiring Republican is being replaced by another Republican, the incoming lawmaker is more conservative, according to Crowdpac. In three Georgia House districts where incumbents decided to enter the Republican primary for an open Senate seat, two were replaced by candidates judged more conservative ideologically by Crowdpac.
The biggest ideological changes came in districts where a Democrat was being replaced by a Republican, or vice versa. In Iowa, the Democrat Bruce Braley’s failed bid for the Senate opened his House seat, which was won by Rod Blum, a Republican businessman from Dubuque. The gap between Mr. Braley’s ideological score, -6.8, and Mr. Blum’s, 8.5, is the largest of any district. But even in open seats where the party retained control, the movement was toward the ideological margins.
The movement toward the extremes is clearer in some House districts where a long-serving lawmaker retired in a safe seat. In Wisconsin’s Sixth district, the Republican Tom Petri is being replaced by Glenn Grothman, who is one of the most conservative candidates elected to the new House, according to Crowdpac.
The movement in districts where Democrats retired and were replaced by Democrats is smaller. That’s the case in Hawaii’s First District, where Colleen Hanabusa’s replacement, Mark Takai, has a Crowdpac score of -6.9, more liberal than Ms. Hanabusa’s -6.1.