Return to the Guide to the Utah Legislature.
Political scientists have developed advanced algorithms that can calculate each legislator's ideology score based on his or her legislative voting record. Here I use the W-NOMINATE method (it's an acronym, hence the caps). Important caveats:
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 - 2019 - 2020
Senate: - 2007 - 2008 - 2009 - 2010 - 2011 - 2012 - 2013 - 2014 - 2015 - 2016 - 2017 - 2018 - 2019 - 2020
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
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 |