The Green Machine: Environmental Constituents and Congressional Voting

This paper quantifies the impact of environmentally-concerned constituents, as measured by original data on environmental group membership by district, on congressional voting. The new measure of constituency interest enables us to assess the role of constituents in a particular policy area for the first time. In general, members of Congress vote more pro-environmental when they have more members of environmental groups in their districts. However, there is a differential impact based on the party of the member of Congress, enhancing our understanding of representation. Moderate Republicans vote more pro-environmental than their moderate Democratic counterparts, but Democrats respond more strongly than Republicans to environmental group membership in their districts. Acknowledgements This research was completed in part during my time at PERC, the Property and Environment Research Center, as a Lone Mountain Fellow. I am grateful for their support and for the helpful seminar comments. Charles Stewart III, Stephen Ansolabehere, Stephen M. Meyer, Kevin Karty, Terry Anderson, Jayne Stancavage, Jason Sullivan, Benjamin Bishin, and Carl Klarner provided valuable comments on earlier drafts. I would also like to thank Daniel Silverman at the Sierra Club, Paige Moses at the National Wildlife Federation, Linda Lopez at the National Resources Defense Council, and Jennifer Fewquay at the Nature Conservancy who provided membership data.