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In 1981 Wattenberg argued the decline in party strength was caused by the movement of voters towards a neutral independent position. We reevaluate his hypothesis in light of the twenty years of additional survey data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Note: This paper is intended to be part of panel on Roll Call Voting at the State Level organized by Seth Masket. Southern state legislatures in the U.S. South were subjected to three major exogenous shocks over the last few decades. First, the passage of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act transformed the southern electorate and reenfranchised African-American voters. Second, the Supreme Court overturned electoral districts lines that overrepresented rural areas and underrepresented urban areas. Third, general elections became meaningful events as two-party competition began to emerge in the region at the state legislative level. Recent analysis of roll call voting in Congress by Poole and Rosenthal (1999) strongly suggests that most Members of Congress do not change their mind very much. That is to say, that they have a particular ideological position (measured as an ideal point) and they tend to stay fixed in that position within the policy space. This paper will examine what happens to the ideal points of members in a legislature while tremendous changes are transforming politics in the state. Do stable ideal points reflect a stable electoral system, or is that politician’s beliefs are firmly fixed and unlikely to change regardless of change in the political system? This paper will examine the impact of these three major changes on roll call voting behavior inside the Georgia State House of Representatives. Using contested roll call votes gathered between 1961-2000. Of particular interest are the dynamics within the Democratic Party members as between the conservative rural members and urban African-American legislators become an important voting bloc in the 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]