A test for pure or apparent ideology in congressional voting

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A politician's preferences do matter. He is not simply a captured agent speaking only for his constituent's interests. Some latitude exists for him to shirk his responsibility to serve his constituents' interests and to cast votes consistent with his own personal ideology. More important to our understanding and modeling of voting behavior, shirking for ideological consumption is seen to increase with age once a threshold of about 53 years old is reached. Shirking is not a phenomena of the politicians' final term in office, rather it likely exists in every term and begins to increase significantly two terms prior to the expected horizon. Sixty percent of the sample of senators were seen to exhibit increasing ideological consumption with age.