After some work on formatting and compiling, I’m pleased to announce the release of the 2008 Idaho Conservative scorecards.

It’ll be quite noticeable that by looking at the percentages that many legislators received in 2007 v. their 2008 scores, that there have been some fairly dramatic shifts. This is not necessarily due to any sort of ideological shift, but rather to the type of issues to come before the legislature. While there were fewer obvious issues, there were several clear cu Conservatives issues that came before the legislature with a reasonable amount of opposition from liberal sources. The “problem” is that due to the basic, and I would say common sensical nature of most of the issues scored this past session, there were quite a bit fewer “yea” votes than in the 2008 session and with only five votes being scored in this session (as opposed to seven in the Senate and nine in the House), there are quite a few more high scores, and a surprising number of 100%.

The 2008 scorecard is best viewed as a continuation of the 2007 Scorecard. Together, they help to paint a more accurate picture of the legislature. The more votes we have, the better the sample and the least likely a score is simply to be the results of issues that are peculiar to one specific year. Think of 2007 as a mid-term exam, 2008’s session as the final, and the combined score as the actual grade.

Of course, there are limitations to any scorecard, and even with the combined totals from both sessions, we have about half the total roll call votes that the American Conservative Union uses for their scorecards, and I know that some may disagree with some of the issues I chose. However, I feel the final product does give us an idea of where legislators stand, which prior to this past legislature, we didn’t have a way to track. It is my hope that we’ll continue to find ways to improve and refine this process. The Scorecard Information follows below:

Senate Scorecard
Senate Scorecard Printable Version

House Scorecard
House Scorecard Printable Version

2007-2008 Scorecard Summary: Most Conservative and Most Liberal by chamber and by party.

2007 House Scorecard
2007 Senate Scorecard

Posted on April 21st, 2008 by admin
Filed under: 2008 Scorecard