The politics of net neutrality

After Josh Marshall linked to the roll call tally for the "net neutrality" amendment, which was defeated 269-152 on Thursday in the House, I decided to take a closer look.

A quick statistical analysis shows that the vote was predicted extremely well by the ideology of members of Congress (where ideology is measured by DW-NOMINATE estimates from the 108th Congress, the standard metric of ideological preference in political science).

This is bad news for network neutrality advocates like me. The primary ideological division in Congress is, in large part, the result of differing views about the role of the government in the economy. If moderate members of Congress see network neutrality as a question of their fealty to the free market, network neutrality will lose. Right now, this issue splits the Democratic party (140 yes, 58 no) and unites the Republicans (11 yes, 211 no). No wonder the Republican leadership allowed Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, to offer the amendment rather than blocking it using the House rules.

Several left-leaning bloggers have expressed outrage at Democrats who voted no on the amendment. But it's not surprising that moderates would vote no given how the vote turned out. A better way to look at the issue is to see who voted yes who "should have" voted no according to their ideology, and conversely for those who "should have" voted yes.

The top 10 heroes (members with the lowest estimated probability of voting yes):
1) Walter Jones (R-NC)
2) Jeff Miller (R-FL)
3) James Sensenbrenner (R-WI)
4) Dan Burton (R-IN)
5) Gary Miller (R-CA)
6) Jo Ann Davis (R-VA)
7) Frank Wolf (R-VA)
8) Ralph Regula (R-OH)
9) Heather Wilson (R-NM)
10) Christopher Shays (R-CT)

The top 10 zeroes (members with the lowest estimated probability of voting no):
1) George Miller (D-CA)
2) Danny Davis (D-IL)
3) Linda Sanchez (D-CA)
4) Alcee Hastings (D-FL)
5) William "Lacy" Clay (D-MO)
6) Edolphus Towns (D-NY)
7) Bobby Rush (D-IL)
8) Chaka Fatah (D-PA)
9) Gregory Meeks (D-NY)
10) Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX)

Comments

[Peter]

So, what's your take on why a lot of the CBC appears to have voted no, and why these particular Republicans, who don't immediately appear to share any obvious similarity, voted yes?

[Brendan Nyhan]

It's possible that some liberal Democrats (whether white or black) who represent poorer districts where net neutrality isn't an issue saw this as a "free vote" where they could build a more business-friendly profile without incurring any electoral costs. But that's just speculation.

As for the Republicans, I have no idea. Given that only 11 of them defected, they just may be anomalies.