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Ideology scores for the Utah Senate, 2011

Political scientists have developed advanced algorithms that can calculate each legislator's ideology score based on his or her legislative voting record, called a NOMINATE score (it's an acronym, hence the caps). Usually these scores are used to study Congress. They are difficult and time-consuming to calculate, so they are not available for most states. As part of my research, I calculated scores for Utah legislators. Important caveats:

  1. Ideology scores have no scale. There is not a number that means "liberal." Scores only have relative meaning. A lower score is more liberal than a higher score.
  2. Scores are only comparable within a single chamber, within a single year. You cannot compare House scores to Senate scores, and you cannot compare 2010 scores to 2011 scores. (That's because of caveat #1: Scores have no scale.)
  3. Zero does not mean "moderate," it just means "the middle of this group of legislators." Since Utah's legislature is very conservative, the most moderate Utah legislators would seem very conservative on a national scale. Even scores below 0 probably indicate a pretty conservative legislator in these scores.

You can find a thorough discussion of these ideology scores at the Utah data points blog.

The scores below are for 2011 in the Utah Senate. Select a different year here:
House: - 2007 - 2008 - 2009 - 2010 - 2011
Senate: - 2007 - 2008 - 2009 - 2010 - 2011

Distribution of scores

The plot below summarizes how many legislators fall into each score range. There is one "D" for each Democrat in the given range, and one "R" for each Republican. There are 29 legislators in the Utah Senate.

 -100 to -90 | DDD
-90.1 to -80 | 
-80.1 to -70 | 
-70.1 to -60 | D
-60.1 to -50 | D
-50.1 to -40 | D
-40.1 to -30 | D
-30.1 to -20 | 
-20.1 to -10 | 
  -10.1 to 0 | 
   0.1 to 10 | 
  10.1 to 20 | 
  20.1 to 30 | 
  30.1 to 40 | 
  40.1 to 50 | 
  50.1 to 60 | R
  60.1 to 70 | RRR
  70.1 to 80 | RRRRRRRRR
  80.1 to 90 | RRRR
 90.1 to 100 | RRRRR

Detailed ideology data

If you use this data in published work, please credit me appropriately.

Legislator Party Chamber Year Ideology score
Romero, Ross I. D Senate 2011 -95.3
Robles, Luz D Senate 2011 -94.5
McAdams, Benjamin M. D Senate 2011 -92.5
Jones, Patricia W. D Senate 2011 -60.1
Morgan, Karen W. D Senate 2011 -50.7
Davis, Gene D Senate 2011 -45.1
Mayne, Karen D Senate 2011 -37.1
Hillyard, Lyle W. R Senate 2011 57.9
Van Tassell, Kevin T. R Senate 2011 61.0
Christensen, Allen M. R Senate 2011 66.8
Hinkins, David P. R Senate 2011 68.2
Stowell, Dennis E. R Senate 2011 70.2
Knudson, Peter C. R Senate 2011 71.4
Bramble, Curtis S. R Senate 2011 74.1
Okerlund, Ralph R Senate 2011 74.1
Adams, J. Stuart R Senate 2011 77.8
Reid, Stuart C. R Senate 2011 78.2
Urquhart, Stephen H. R Senate 2011 79.6
Niederhauser, Wayne L. R Senate 2011 79.8
Thatcher, Daniel W. R Senate 2011 80.0
Stevenson, Jerry W. R Senate 2011 81.0
Waddoups, Michael G. R Senate 2011 84.0
Liljenquist, Daniel R. R Senate 2011 84.9
Valentine, John L. R Senate 2011 85.5
Madsen, Mark B. R Senate 2011 90.7
Stephenson, Howard A. R Senate 2011 93.8
Buttars, D. Chris R Senate 2011 95.3
Dayton, Margaret R Senate 2011 97.3
Jenkins, Scott K. R Senate 2011 99.5