Abstract
During his time as a state senator in Illinois, Barack Obama voted “Present” 129 times, a deliberate act of nonvoting that subsequently became an important campaign issue during the 2008 presidential elections. In this article, I examine the use of Present votes in the Illinois state senate. I find evidence that Present votes can largely be characterized as protest votes used as a legislative tool by the minority party. Incorporating information from Present votes into a Bayesian polytomous item-response model, I find that this information increases the efficiency of ideal point estimates by approximately 35%. There is little evidence of significant moderation by Obama when Present votes are accounted for, though my results suggest that Obama’s voting record may have moderated significantly before his subsequent election to the U.S. Senate. My results also suggest that because legislative nonvoting may occur for a variety of reasons, naive inclusion of nonvoting behavior into vote choice models may lead to biased results.
Highlights
During the 2008 U.S presidential election, Barack Obama’s prior voting record in the Illinois state senate came under scrutiny in both the Democratic primary and the general election
This article examines the use of the Present vote in the 91st to 93rd Illinois state senate, the three General Assemblies in which Obama served as a state senator prior to winning his seat in the U.S Senate
The Illinois state senate is of interest because of Obama’s prior service in the chamber and because the mechanisms that drive Present votes in Illinois can be isolated in ways that are difficult to do in other legislatures
Summary
92 SB609: Restricts proximity of adult entertainment establishments from schools, Concurrence 22. 93 SB82: Amends Election Code to conform with Help America Vote Act, Concurrence. 93 SB100: Amends Compensation Review Act, allows judges have compensation increased by COL adjustments, Override
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