From Personal to Partisan: Abortion, Party and Religion in the California State Assembly, 1967-1996

Abstract

We argue that the effect of legislators’ personal background on their policy stands may vary over time. We discuss several means by which this may occur. We then illustrate this process with the case of abortion politics in California from the 1960s through the 1990s. Using newly collected evidence on Assemblymembers’ and constituents’ religion and voting patterns, we show that divisions in the State Assembly on abortion were chiefly religious at first, but later became highly partisan. This shift was distinct from overall polarization, and not a result of district-level factors or “sorting” of legislators by religion into party caucuses. Instead, growing ties between new movements and parties, feminists for Democrats, and the Christian Right for the Republicans, made party affiliation supplant religion as the leading cue for legislators on abortion, impelling many incumbents to revise their positions. Examining how personal characteristics become outweighed by partisan considerations as issues evolve advances understanding of party position change and polarization and contributes to the literature on representation.