23
Table 3
Survey Descriptive Statistics
Party Identification
Frequency
Percent
Republican
Independent
Democrat
Total
5
1
20
26
19.2
3.8
76.9
100.0
Ideology
Very Conservative
Somewhat Conservative
Moderate
Somewhat Liberal
Very Liberal
Total
1
6
8
7
4
26
3.8
23.1
30.8
26.9
15.4
100.0
Legislative Chamber
State Senate
State Assembly
Total
10
16
26
38.5
61.5
100.0
Legislative District Population Density
Minimum: 15.7 persons per square mile
Maximum: 10,610.9 persons per square mile
Mean: 1,075 persons per square mile
Standard Deviation: 2,659.6
Table 3 provides some descriptive statistics regarding the surveys that were returned by
members of the state legislature.
Almost 77% of the legislators who returned the survey
classified themselves as Democrats, while 19.2% classified themselves as Republicans. The lone
Independent from the 1987/1988 legislative session did choose to participate in the survey. Not
surprisingly after viewing the party identification statistics, when asked about ideology, the
respondents are skewed towards the liberal side of the scale; far fewer of the respondents
classified themselves as very conservative (1) versus very liberal (4). Regarding the legislative
chamber of each respondent, sixteen of the 26 members who returned the survey were members
of the State Assembly.
In thinking about the ratio of Assemblymembers to Senators, the
population ratio would be two Assemblymembers to one Senator. In the sample collected, the
ratio is 1.6 Assemblymembers to 1 Senator, which is not too far from the expected. Finally, the
respondents represented districts of various sizes ranging from rural districts highly urbanized
Convention