High RWA scores hurt Democratic but not Republican advancement to higher office

Evidence

The House Democrats averaged 153.3 on the RWA Scale, and the Senate Democrats came in significantly lower, at 141.7. The House Republicans averaged 176.5, and so nearly did the Senate Republicans (176.3). Taking into account the differences in the parties to start with, I would say being a High RWA usually hurts your chances of advancement in the Democratic Party but does not hurt you if you are a Republican. … Projecting these data onto the national scene, I would expect national Democratic leaders to be, usually, pretty Low RWAs—lower than their state-level associates. And I would expect leaders of the national Republican Party to be, usually, as High as the nest of Republican scores in Figure 11.2. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 3719

Categorization

• XREF: Directly corroborates the vault’s claim linking the GOP to authoritarian/nationalist politics in Cooper and Whitehead & Perry.