Congressional Parochialism: Another Data Point

Abstract

Critics of Congress continue to decry the institution's parochialism; legislators are town boys, isolated or insulated from national concerns. Rieselbach's previous paper tested two assumptions that underlie these criticisms: (1) that rural America is overrepresented in Congress, and (2) that representatives of such communities are more provincial in their outlook. Data on the 90th House of Representatives (1967-1968) disconfirmed the first assumption but sustained the second: House members born in rural areas were, in fact, underrepresented, but those who won seats were more parochial (as measured by support for the conservative coalition) in their legislative voting. Here we retest these assumptions for the 95th Congress (1977-1978), using the same methods. As before, we compare the proportion of legislators from birthplaces of a given size with the proportion of the national population residing in cities of similar size in the census year (1930) nearest the average date of birth for the lawmakers. Once again, the conclusion is clear: rural areas were underrepresented in the House; all other areas were overrepresented. Forty-four percent of the 1930 population resided in rural regions, but only 19 percent of the legislators were born there; each other community type provided a greater proportion of House members than of the population. The data on the second hypothesis (see Table 1) suggest that the link between birthplace and conservative voting remained, but was somewhat attenuated in the 95th Congress. Democrats born in rural areas and small towns supported the conservative coalition more frequently, but the distance between them and their colleagues born in more urban areas decreased. For Republicans, the tendency was in the same direction, with