Replication Data for: Measuring Executive Ideology and Its Influence

Executives are important elites, and ideology is important to elite behavior, but measurement challenges and a focus on the presidency have kept scholars from fully exploring executive ideology. This article advocates studying US governors to learn more about executive ideology, and it encourages this work in three steps. First, I provide a critical overview of sources of data that scholars can use to measure gubernatorial preferences. Campaign finance-based ideology scores (Bonica 2014), or CFscores for short, offer the greatest data coverage and allow common-scale comparisons with other actors. Second, I address concerns that CFscores are unable to differentiate between members of the same party. I find that they amply explain within-party variation in other measures, as well as predict the decisions that governors make when in office. However, it does appear that CFscores are stronger indicators for Democrats than Republicans. Finally, I run a preliminary test of the substantive importance of studying executive ideology at the state level. Four models explain state policy liberalism as a function of executive, legislative, and citizen ideology. Gubernatorial preferences emerge as most predictive of the three. Taken as a whole, this article aims to substantively encourage and methodologically facilitate greater investigation into the role of executive ideology in the policy process.