Legislature Polarization and Single Payer Prospects

I came across this chart while looking at Kevin Drum's blog at Motherjones.com.  It summarizes the results of a study measuring the amount of political polarization in all 50 state legislatures compared to the US Congress. They looked at the roll call voting record of each legislator from 1996-2009 for both houses (and Nebraska which has a unicameral legislature) to see how polarized their record was and ranked each member within their party.  The difference in the polarization between the members ranked in the middle of their party determines the polarization scores of the legislature. 

The US Congress, which has left John Conyers' HR 676 single payer bill in committee has a score of 1.2.  California, which almost passed single payer in 2010, had by far the highest polarization score at 2.5 while Vermont which did pass a single payer bill in 2011 has a score of 1.3.  Montana and Hawaii which are considering bills have scores of 1.6 and 0.9 respectively.  Our state, Pennsylvania of course, has a score close to the US Congress at 1.1 (I'm extrapolating from the graph for these numbers).  Louisiana had the lowest polarization at 0.5.

So what do these numbers mean for single payers prospects in the PA legislature with our new economic impact study?  As the film Lincoln artfully demonstrates raw numbers of votes are most important.  California, though polarized, had a large democratic majority which almost passed the bill.  Vermont is less polarized and passed their bill. 

Polarization in legislatures can fluctuate over time but averaged across years and houses can remain relatively stable.  Their original study plus the raw data can be downloaded here.

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