Party differences in authoritarianism nearly vanished among sampled state legislators

Evidence

As for the RWA Scale, if you are sick to death of hearing the same old results in study after study, cheer up. This time the test fell short. The interitem correlations averaged only .35, causing alpha to plummet to .94. More noteworthy, while Republicans scored higher than Democrats in all of the eight chambers surveyed, the difference attained significance only in the Indiana Senate. The final score was much closer than usual, 174.2 versus 158.6, and the RWA-party correlations averaged a mere .25. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 3575

Categorization

• QUESTION: The reliability fell to .94 — a surprisingly low alpha for this scale. Worth understanding why this legislator sample produced weaker internal consistency.
• XREF: Contradicts the usual strong RWA-party correlations found across many studies; could tie into the deeper question of whether party sorting on authoritarianism is recent.