The Democrats have a bigger tent. Or do they?

The other day I posted a diary on cluster analysis of the US Senate.  This is sort of a followup, looking at how closely the Dems and Reps align on various ratings.

See below
First, let’s look at the average for each party for each group

So, by far the smallest difference is ITIC, which is a single-issue group.  Next smallest is COC, which is pro-business.  (can you spell ‘fundraising”?)

The biggest difference is, indeed, for the Christian Coalition.  But isn’t that just common sense?  The theocons are Repubs.

We can also look at the MINIMUM for each party by each group

Group.1 “D”  “R”  
ADA     25   0
ACLU    33   0
AFS     86   0
LCV     17   0
ITIC     0  82
NTU      0  48
COC      0  67
ACU      0  40
NTLC     0  63
CHC      0  50

which shows that if you’re a Dem, you are certainly sympathetic to labor (AFS), whereas if you are Repub., you are surely sympathetic to the information mega companies (ITIC), businees (COC), for budget insolvency (heheehe NTLC) and Christian friendly.  It ALSO shows that, as my title says, we are the big tent party.

Next, let’s look at the maximum for each group, by party

        1     3    
Group.1 Dem.  Repub  
ADA     100  65
ACLU    100  67
AFS     100  57
LCV     100  92
ITIC    100  100
NTU      34   89
COC      81   100
ACU      52  100
NTLC     43   98
CHC      83  100

There are only 2 groups with low maxima for Dems: NTU (taxes are bad) and ACU (broad based conservative).  For Repubs, only AFS (labor) has a low maximum.

To make it even clearer, we can look at a boxplot of each group’s ratings for each party.  

In each smaller chart, there are boxes for Dem., Indep., and Repub.  The line in the middle is the median.  The box is from the 25%tile to 75%tile, the dotted line going out to a horizontal line is the approximate 5%tile and 95%tile, and dots are outliers.  

Let’s go group by group: For ADA, the Dems have a smaller range. except for one with a rating of 25.  That, oddly enough, belongs to John Kerry.  I know I copied the figure right from the book….

For ACLU, the Dems have a bigger range: There’s one Dem under 40 (Ben Nelson).  For AFS (labor) the Repubs have a much bigger tent.  The Dems are solidly pro-labor (at least if you go by the AFS).  For LCV (conservation) the two parties are almost mirror images of each other.  The three outlying Dems are Kerry, Reid, and Johnson (SD).  The outlying Repubs are McCain and Kyl of AZ, Snowe and Collins of ME, and Chafee (RI) (it looks like 3 dots, but it’s really 5).

For ITIC (big media and tech), the Dems are all over the map, but the Repubs are tightly bunched at the top.

For NTU (anti-tax) the Repubs spread out a bit more than the Dems, but both have a big range.   The COC (chambers of commerce) gives high marks to almost every Repub., but low marks to almost no one of either party.  For the broad conservative ACU, the parties are again almost mirror images.  The outlying Dem is Nelson (NE) and the outlying Repub is Chafee (RI).  NTLC is much like NTU, not surprising, as they have similar issues.
Finally, for the Christian Coalition, there is one outlying Dem (again Nelson) and several outlying Repubs: Snowe, Collins and Chafee.