The Dakota Effect
If you count a state’s congressional delegation not as the number of senators and House members currently representing that state but rather as the number of members of Congress who grew up there, you immediately encounter a striking fact: Easily the two best represented states, in terms of the number of native members of Congress per capita, are North and South Dakota:
“No other state even comes close to North Dakota’s 3.7 exported members of Congress for every 400,000 current residents, nor, for that matter, does any other state even come close to South Dakota’s 1.6 exported members per 400,000 current residents. Moreover, … in both North and South Dakota representation begins at home: every member of the two Dakota delegations was home-grown. Thus, in terms of all members of Congress (that is, natives of a state plus exports to other states) rather than just exports, the very same pattern holds: North Dakota, with 5.6 members of Congress per 400,000 residents, and South Dakota, with 3.2, stand out far above the rest.”
That’s from a piece by my colleague Garry Young and me, in the latest issue of PS: Political Science & Politics (HERE, gated). Garry and I decided to have some fun with these factoids, so we summoned up our social science tools to help us answer two basic questions about the “Dakota effect”: Why, and so what?
To address the first question, we tested an array of different explanations. Could it be, we wondered, that the Dakotas’ wholesale exportation of future senators and representatives to other states is simply an artifact of a broader depopulation of the Dakotas? Or how about the idea that because it’s too cold for children in the Dakotas to go outside and play and because they have no professional sports teams to sit in front of the TV and watch, by process of elimination they stay in their rooms and read and ultimately become little political science wonks? Or perhaps the superior intelligence of Dakotans (who, year in and year out, lead the nation in mean SAT scores) means that when they move to other states they automatically end up atop the gene pool and succeed in whatever pursuits they attempt, including winning political office? Our statistical analyses revealed that even when we took all these potential explanations into account, the Dakota effect survived. It seems that there’s just something about Dakotans that makes people want to elect them to Congress.
But what difference does this difference really make? To answer this question, we reanalyzed data from an earlier study of congressional earmarks for instituitions of higher education, adding one new predictor to the explanatory model: whether or not the district to which the earmarks were allocated was one of the Dakotas. The answer?
“During the period in question, the coefficient for the Dakota Effect was approximately $2.6 million per congressional district. This means that, with all the other factors that affected earmarks for higher education held constant, an extra $2.6 million was earmarked for each of the Dakotas’ two congressional districts – a tidy $5.2 million bonus for the Dakotas in all. And of course these were only the funds that Congress earmarked for institutions of higher education – a small slice of Congress’ overall discretionary spending pie.”
Other states, we concluded, have much to learn from the oft-maligned Dakotas:
“Taking their cue from the results reported here, states should begin providing college tuition support for promising high school seniors who vow to become political science majors at out-of-state schools. To be sure, this could prove costly in the short term, but these costs should be recouped in the medium to long run when the awardees get themselves elected to Congress while retaining their gratitude and deeply ingrained allegiance to their state of origin. To be sure, some states may not boast a critical mass of the wily stock capable of getting elected to Congress as outsiders – but many such states, e.g., Iowa, seem bent in any event on the ill-considered opposite strategy of encouraging their residents to stay at home.”
(Breaking news: Our tongue-in-cheek analysis doesn’t seem to be playing well in South Dakota. A reporter for the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader apparently visited the Cambridge University Press website, read the first page of the article, took umbrage at our slurs on the Dakotas, and contacted former South Dakota Senator George McGovern, who hadn’t read the article either but was only too willing to say some negative things about it. In one of those quotes, Senator McGovern alleges that Garry and I don’t know anything about South Dakota. I can’t speak for Garry, but of all the criticisms my work has ever received, this one cuts the deepest, for I am a veritable walking encyclopedia of South Dakota lore. For the Argus-Leader story, with the McGovern quotes, click HERE.)
Comments
You have never been to North Dakota?!?
Posted by: Paul | May 1, 2008 11:06 AM
Why would a South Dakotan go to North Dakota? To experience the weather the day before it hits South Dakota?
Posted by: Lee Sigelman | May 1, 2008 12:38 PM
As a native of SOUTH Dakota, I would offer an alternative hypothesis derived from the most famous native of our home state, Tom Brokaw. Not only is he smart and well read, but he has no discernible accent. Had he been born in Brooklyn, Louisiana, Minnesota, or even Vermont, he would not have been a television newscaster.
Perhaps South Dakotans are more likely to get elected to Congress in other states because they have no accent and are universally understood throughout the country. It's virtually impossible to place a migrant South Dakotan to her state of origin simply by listening to her talk. Not so for natives of many other states. And getting elected to Congress has a lot to do with how you talk.
Of course, this says nothing of North Dakotans with discernible accents, but not all North Dakotans could have starred in Fargo!
Posted by: Joe Wright | May 1, 2008 01:14 PM
Joe, I've gotta disagree with you here. At least in the part of the state where I grew up (east, close to Minnesota), the Upper Midwestern, upper-register, Scandinavian-influenced accent is pretty pronounced. I didn't used to think so (I thought we spoke English as it is "supposed" to be spoken, i.e., like Chicago radio announcers), but when I would go back home after long absences, I would always be surprised by the regional accent. Oof-dah!
Posted by: Lee Sigelman | May 1, 2008 01:22 PM
"It seems that there’s just something about Dakotans that makes people want to elect them to Congress."
I'm curious to hear whether the effect is present even prior to ballots being cast. Are there simply more Dakotans running in various congressional elections? Without knowing this can you really establish that they are more electable? My thinking is that the housebound-policy-wonk effect suggests we should see more Dakotans running and that a significantly higher proportion of those actually winning is the interesting finding here, if that indeed holds.
Interesting stuff, either way.
Posted by: Greg | May 1, 2008 01:45 PM
Well, I'm thinking of Pierre and Vermillion, but Brokaw's from Webster - up near Minnesota and ND.
Posted by: Joe | May 1, 2008 01:59 PM
Greg: You might be right (or not); I'm not aware of any data on the home states of defeated candidates.
Joe: Sorry, but Tom Brokaw is from Yankton, not Webster.
Posted by: Lee Sigelman | May 1, 2008 02:08 PM
Iowans tend to think that Brokaw's life started at channel 4 in Sioux City. Northwest Iowans, anyway.
Posted by: Eric | May 1, 2008 07:50 PM
O Dakota gurus--Can you tell me the story behind the division of the Dakota territories into two before statehood? I've heard two, quite contradictory, accounts. The Wikipedia version is that the goal was to give the Republicans more seats in the Senate. A relative of mine (one of the handful of SD emigrants who is not a member of Congress) once told me that Congress feared a unified Dakota would come to dominate the House. (I think this may have been based on the first foray by political scientists into forecasting models.) If the latter version is accurate, I wonder whether the finding you report here might represent South Dakota's revenge, achieving dominance despite the division.
Posted by: Michael | May 2, 2008 07:56 AM
Michael: The first story has the ring of truth about it, but I'm not sure that it's the real story. In my hypothetical spare time, I will consult some historical references and if I learn anything pertinent, you will be the first to know.
Posted by: Lee Sigelman | May 2, 2008 08:10 AM
Michael: The first story has the ring of truth about it, but I'm not sure that it's the real story. In my hypothetical spare time, I will consult some historical references and if I learn anything pertinent, you will be the first to know.
Posted by: Lee Sigelman | May 2, 2008 08:10 AM
Speaking as a young North Dakota-born reporter at your hometown newspaper in Watertown, S.D., it's interesting to note that this 'Dakota Effect' happens despite both states' efforts to keep their young in the nest. Clearly the bookish, ambitious Dakota young bolt with very little bitterness. All of this makes me question both my ambition and my level of bitterness.
I would also note that the marketing slogan of my alma mater, South Dakota State University, is "You can go anywhere from here." Perhaps they should add, "and send money home when you make it to Congress." Again I'm not doing much for the folks back home.
Some soul searching may be in order.
Posted by: Jeremy Fugleberg | May 2, 2008 09:40 AM
Jeremy: In Pennsylvania we too know something about bitterness; in fact, I had to relax my grip on my gun and Bible in order to type this. But I'm not from Pennsylvania, so for me you've certainly raised some interesting questions about the relationship--both sign and direction--between bitterness about one's childhood and distance from one's childhood home. Over to the psychologists. Go Public Opinion.
Posted by: Michael | May 2, 2008 11:02 AM
as a bookish native dakotan from Brokaw's hometown who came back to SD after getting my doctorate, I can say Michael's plan 1 was destroyed in the post Mundt years as the SD national reps have been predominately Dems since Mundt had his debilitating stroke. Does Johnson's health problem presage another shift? of course, the SD Dems vote like Republicans so maybe not, but they at least caucus democratic
Posted by: BillCinSD | May 2, 2008 12:38 PM
Tom Brokaw did spend some of his early years in Webster then moved to Yankton.
Posted by: SCP | May 3, 2008 12:17 AM
When I moved from Presho to MN and a
job with Dayton's -- an executive there (also from SD) resigned to go East. His
explanation was that SD needed to export its people of common sense and plant them around the country to improve behavior, intelligence and culture everywhere else. He pioneered in New
England. I tried NYC and SF.
Posted by: sonja larsen | May 3, 2008 05:16 PM
While it may not be entirely accent, Joe Wright (my new colleague? Too common a name and I can't pick up the accent from here) is on to something I think.
What you have in Dakotans is (a) net export of population to everywhere, (b) few discernible Dakotan traits on which to project hostilities. A Dakotan can immediately become "one of us" and a relatively high proportion try. Seligman ... Zelig man ... it's so obvious now.
Occasionally, you find a talented chameleon who has undergone unusual migrations (perhaps due to a parent or spouse) who can pull this off despite non-Dakotan advantages. Michigander-Bay Stater Romney was oft-cited for this, but it's tough to top Hillary. I was already impressed that an Illinum had pulled off the rare Arkansan / New Yorker combo, but was amazed last month when she was able to also conjure a formative, but previously unmentioned, childhood here in Pennsylvania.
We voted for her. What else could we do? She's one of us.
Posted by: Burt | May 5, 2008 06:05 AM
I'm going to have to agree with the accent comments here. this may diminish as television erases accents in general, but it is a pretty key element to exportability of talent that the talent not SOUND like they are from someplace else.
Picture a native of New Orleans running for office in northern wisconsin. I'm verging on self parody here (I'm from wisconsin), but no one would be able to understand each other.
This, I think, is a non-trivial point to be made. The easiest way to argue against this point is to suggest that Kansas, North Dakota (to a lesser extent), Nebraska and other mid-mid western states can law claim to an imperceptible accent. So insofar as those states are exporters of congresscritters with respect to SD, we might judge South Dakota's native exporting ability.
Posted by: Adam Hyland | May 8, 2008 01:19 PM