Bound Volume Number

5

Degree Type

Honors Capstone Project

Date of Submission

Spring 5-1-2015

Capstone Advisor

Prof. Jonathan Hanson

Honors Reader

Prof. Shana Gadarian

Capstone Major

Political Science

Capstone College

Arts and Science

Audio/Visual Component

no

Keywords

US House of Representatives, 112th Congress, economic policy

Capstone Prize Winner

no

Won Capstone Funding

no

Honors Categories

Social Sciences

Subject Categories

American Politics

Abstract

This paper studies the impact of personal wealth on legislator voting ideology. I specifically examine members of the US House of Representatives during the 112th Congress. After establishing a relationship between wealth and poltical views toward economic policies amongst the general public, I hypothesize that wealthier legislators will have more conservative roll call vote records on economic policy than their less affluent colleagues. After controlling for party, district ideology, district wealth, and district education level, my multivariate analyses indicate that party and district ideology are the only variables that have a statistically significant relationship with legislator voting ideology. My research does not support my initial hypothesis and indicates that personal wealth is not a significant determinant of legislator voting ideology on economic issues.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

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