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Ideology scores for the Utah Senate, 2012

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 2012 in the Utah Senate. Select a different year here:
House: - 2007 - 2008 - 2009 - 2010 - 2011 - 2012 - 2013 - 2014 - 2015 - 2016 - 2017 - 2018
Senate: - 2007 - 2008 - 2009 - 2010 - 2011 - 2012 - 2013 - 2014 - 2015 - 2016 - 2017 - 2018

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 | 
-60.1 to -50 | DDDD
-50.1 to -40 | 
-40.1 to -30 | 
-30.1 to -20 | 
-20.1 to -10 | 
  -10.1 to 0 | 
   0.1 to 10 | 
  10.1 to 20 | 
  20.1 to 30 | RR
  30.1 to 40 | 
  40.1 to 50 | R
  50.1 to 60 | RRRRR
  60.1 to 70 | RRRRR
  70.1 to 80 | RRRRRR
  80.1 to 90 | R
 90.1 to 100 | RR

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 2012 -99.9
McAdams, Benjamin M. D Senate 2012 -98.1
Escamilla, Luz Robles D Senate 2012 -94.0
Davis, Gene D Senate 2012 -59.5
Morgan, Karen W. D Senate 2012 -57.3
Jones, Patricia W. D Senate 2012 -54.4
Mayne, Karen D Senate 2012 -53.2
Hillyard, Lyle W. R Senate 2012 24.0
Van Tassell, Kevin T. R Senate 2012 27.2
Knudson, Peter C. R Senate 2012 46.3
Weiler, Todd R Senate 2012 51.3
Osmond, Aaron R Senate 2012 52.9
Okerlund, Ralph R Senate 2012 53.7
Stevenson, Jerry W. R Senate 2012 55.0
Christensen, Allen M. R Senate 2012 58.2
Niederhauser, Wayne L. R Senate 2012 62.3
Reid, Stuart C. R Senate 2012 63.5
Adams, J. Stuart R Senate 2012 64.9
Urquhart, Stephen H. R Senate 2012 65.2
Bramble, Curtis S. R Senate 2012 70.0
Waddoups, Michael G. R Senate 2012 76.8
Hinkins, David P. R Senate 2012 77.7
Thatcher, Daniel W. R Senate 2012 77.9
Jenkins, Scott K. R Senate 2012 79.3
Stephenson, Howard A. R Senate 2012 79.9
Valentine, John L. R Senate 2012 79.9
Madsen, Mark B. R Senate 2012 86.6
Dayton, Margaret R Senate 2012 93.8
Anderson, Casey O. R Senate 2012 99.5