The terms, “liberal,”  “conservative,” and moderate are popular but have some serious limitations. The term “liberal” could be applied equally to Senator Nicole LeFavour (D-19) and Rep. Branden Durst (D-18), but the two disagree on quite a few issues and have far different voting records. The term moderate could be used to apply to Durst and George Eskridge (R-3), even though there’s some serious difference between those two men.

Now, that we’ve had three years of votes for more members, we can really see to what degrees members are committed to an ideology. This can help citizens in many ways as you have an idea who to approach, who to challenge, and who to vote for.

One thing I must note about this ideological scale is that it’s based entirely on voting record. I received a note once complaining that a certain Senator looked pretty conservative on the scorecard even though, he wasn’t. Certain things like establishmentarian tendencies can’t really effectively be measured by voting record alone. However, in most cases, the voting record is a pretty good tool for getting a grasp of how members have voted on the floor, which is a key indicator that can help with citizen outreach and engagement, as well as in judging the value of an incumbent legislator.

As always, there has to be some caution, while most members here have been in the legislature to cast between 24-28 votes, Freshman haven’t been and future sessions may change their lifetime score (which is being used for this scale) dramatically. Because of this, true legislative freshmen are marked with an asterick (*). Also, some members are on the borderline and may go up or down between categories. 

This system of ideological rating is based on a seven-tier system, though the Senate and the House only have six of these tiers, with no pure centrists in the House, and no members with a “Most Liberal” rating in the Senate.

Those who are in the Most Liberal (0-10%) have got pretty well down the line far left voting records. Liberals (11-25%), and Center-Leftists (26-40%) may be more open to supporting a conservative idea like an abortion restrict or protection for the Second Amendment. Centrists (41-60%) really straddle the fence and if they lean anywhere, it’s hard to tell and they really can’t be counted on by either side. Center-right legislators (61-75%) agitate conservatives but end  up voting right more often than not. Conservative legislators (76-90%) vote with us more than ¾ of the time, and the most Conservative legislators (91-100%) tend to be the most consistent and reliable defenders of conservative values.

The graphs below give us a picture of the State Senate: 

and the State House:

And here’s a more precise look at how individual members stack up within this spectrum in the State Senate. Those with a perfect 100% career Conservative voting record are in bold, those with a 0% Conservative voting record are underlined. Each column is listed from the highest conservative rating in that category to the lowest.

 First, in the State Senate:

Second, in the State House:

The bottom line here is that conservatives have done a great job electing solid people to the State House, but if they want to be more successful in Idaho, they have to elect more conservative members of the State Senate.