Rhetorical Representation: Measuring Voter Alignment with Legislative Speech

Political representation, or the degree to which the preferences and interests of voters align with the actions or views of the officials they elect, is typically measured in terms of policy output, legislative voting patterns or ideological orientation. In this paper, I explore a rhetorical dimension of representation by matching individual responses from three decades of public opinion survey data with the legislative floor speeches from the United States Congress over the same time period. I find marked partisan asymmetries in the degree to which the speeches of elected officials reflect the beliefs of their voters. Additionally, strong swing state effects reduce representation for voters in nationally competitive battleground states. These findings largely align with existing research that has identified partisan asymmetries in legislative behavior, ideology and rhetorical strategy.