Wading Knee Deep in Words,Words, Words": Senatorial Rhetoric in the Johnson and Clinton Impeachment Trials

A probit analysis of National Election Studies data finds that unlike earlier midterm elections, Republican mobilization significantly increased the vote for Republicans from Republicans in 1994, as Democratic mobilization did for and among Democrats in 1998. In these elections, mobilization asymmetrically increased perceptions of party differences, party preferences, and party loyalty in voting. In 2002, both Republican and Democratic mobilization efforts affected vote choice, significantly increasing support from independents.     

Leaving on a Jet Plane: Polarization,Foreign Travel,and Comity in Congress

No political observer, politician, or political scientist doubts that party polarization has weakened the social fabric of Congress. Measuring that effect, however, is exceedingly difficult. In this article, we operationalize the congressional social fabric by examining the foreign travel behavior of members of Congress over time. We evaluate the social disintegration in Congress by examining if and whether changes in member travel can explain why the social connectedness of members has waned. Using a unique dataset of foreign travel for House members from 1977 to 2012, we find that Republican House members, in particular, have altered their foreign travel patterns. Ideologically extreme members have always been less likely to take foreign trips, but extremely conservative Republican have become much more likely to travel only with co-partisans as polarization has increased in Congress. Ideologically moderate Republicans, while still traveling as members of bipartisan delegations, have also increased their willingness to travel only with fellow Republicans. Our results suggest that bipartisan foreign travel is a victim of the partisan war waging in Congress.     

Tools for identifying partisan gerrymandering with an application to congressional districting in Pennsylvania

In League of Women Voters v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (2018) the Pennsylvania Supreme Court struck down as a “severe and durable” partisan gerrymander the congressional map drawn by Republicans in 2011 and used in elections from 2012-2016. It did so entirely on state law grounds after a three-judge federal court had rejected issuing a preliminary injunction against the plan. After Pennsylvania failed to enact a lawful remedy plan of its own (due to total disagreement as to how to proceed between the newly elected Democratic governor and the still Republican-controlled legislature), the Court then ordered into place for the 2018 election a map of its own drawn for it by a court-appointed consultant. In a split court, the Court map was endorsed only by judges with Democratic affiliations. Here we compare the 2011 and 2018 congressional maps in terms of a variety of proposed metrics for detecting partisan gerrymandering. We also examine the remedy map proposed by a group of Republican legislators and that proposed by the Democratic governor. We conclude that the 2011 map was a blatant and undisguised pro-Republican gerrymander. Moreover, the remedy map proposed by Republican legislators was a covert pro-Republican gerrymander (what we refer to as a “stealth gerrymander”). The Democratic governor's proposed plan cannot be classified as a pro-Democratic gerrymander and indeed has, if anything, a slight pro-Republican tilt. The 2018 court-drawn remedial map, by all measures, was not a gerrymander.     

Earmarks and Elections to the U.S. House of Representatives

Popular treatments of earmarks abound with allegations that members of Congress use them to aid their reelection campaigns, but the academic literature has yet to examine whether earmarking influences elections. To begin to fill this void, we search for relationships between earmarking and several facets of electoral competition and outcomes in the 2008 and 2010 House elections. There are three principal findings. First, in both election years, active earmarkers faced weaker primary election competition than other members. Second, in 2008 there was a positive correlation between earmarking and campaign receipts. Third, both of these correlations exist only among Democrats. These findings suggest that earmarks critics might be correct in charging that members, particularly Democrats, benefit from the earmarks they place into spending bills.     

The political geography of campaign advertising in U.S. House elections

The extent to which elections are useful instruments of accountability is closely related to the ability of citizens to acquire and utilize information about candidates running in those contests. In this paper, I examine the visibility of campaigns for the United States House of Representatives by analyzing how candidates, political parties and interest groups strategically allocate campaign advertising in media markets and congressional districts across the United States. I show that this allocation is based not only on the competitiveness of the campaign, but also according to the cost and reach of the media markets that dominate congressional districts. Overall, the findings indicate the importance of political geographic considerations for understanding the substantial variation in advertising aired both across and within congressional districts during House campaigns.     

PARTISANSHIP, IDEOLOGY, AND CONSTITUENCY DIFFERENCES ON ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES IN THE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: 1973–78

Three cross-sectional data sets for the U.S. House of Representatives are analyzed for 1973 to 1978. The conclusions are: (1) Political support for environmental legislation has remained stable and has not diminished in the face of economic problems and energy shortages. (2) The East is the region most supportive of environmental issues while the South is by far the least supportive. (3) Clear partisan differences exist with the Democrats consistently more pro-environmental than Republicans. (4) The most important factor associated with environmental support is ideology. Although interrelated with party, it is more salient than either party or constituency factors. (5) Support for pro-environmental voting is strongest in urban and suburban constituencies and weakest in rural and mixed districts.     

Cold War,Public Opinion,and Foreign Policy Spending Decisions: Dynamic Representation by Congress and the President

Conventional wisdom before the Vietnam War held that public opinion exerted no influence on U.S. foreign policy decisions. Scholars working in Vietnam's aftermath found episodic influence of public opinion on foreign policy, but missing in our understanding were longitudinal examinations of public opinion's influence on foreign policy. A number of post-Vietnam scholars subsequently revealed a long-term relationship between public opinion and defense spending. This study extends that work by analyzing responsiveness to public opinion in different foreign policy arenas by different government institutions, and by accounting for a critical variable not relevant in most previous studies: the end of the cold war. We construct a model explaining the influences of public opinion and the cold war on spending proposals for defense and foreign economic aid by the presidency, the House of Representatives and the Senate. Both public opinion and the end of the cold war exert direct influence on defense spending proposals by the presidency, while the Senate and the House respond primarily to public opinion inputs and the partisan composition of the Senate. In the case of foreign economic aid, the cold war's end gives occasion for increasing spending proposals, contrary to the public's expectation that the end of the cold war minimized the need for the U.S. to provide foreign economic assistance.     

Shock troops: The emerging role of Senators in House of representatives campaigns

Since the 1949 introduction of proportional representation for the Senate there have only been two elections (1983 and 84) at which the ALP has gained more Senators in the chamber than the Coalition. The Coalition has held more seats than the ALP since 1987. The decline in Senate fortunes for the Labor Party has occurred despite (or, perhaps, because of) consecutive ALP Governments from 1972–75 and, more conspicuously, 1983–96. The professionalisation of politics through the 1980s and 1990s has dramatically changed the role major parties expect of their Senate teams. The Coalition and Labor Parties each use their Senators and Senatorial office resources as ‘shock troops’ in marginal seats, as well as points of constituency contact for electors in marginal seats or seats held by the opposition. Given that major party Senators are increasingly being used by the party machines as campaign tools, and are increasingly locating their offices and staffers in marginal seats, the numerical advantage the Coalition enjoys in the Senate is worthy of consideration. The additional campaign resources that Senators provide translates potentially into an electoral advantage in the House of Representatives for the Coalition. The Coalition's majority in the Senate may therefore be of as much interest outside the chamber as it is within it.     

Changing the scale and changing the result: Evaluating the impact of an electoral reform on the 2000 and 2004 US Presidential elections

The ‘perverse’ outcome of the 2000 US Presidential election, whereby the candidate with most ‘popular votes’ was defeated in the Electoral College, has stimulated renewed interest in electoral reform in the United States. One option discussed is the Maine/Nebraska system (sometimes termed the Mundt–Coudert scheme) which changes the geography of the contest somewhat. One-fifth of the Electoral College votes are retained for the winner of the popular vote contest in each of the States, with the remainder being allocated to candidates who win in each of the separate Congressional District contests. This paper evaluates the likely outcome of the 2000 and 2004 Electoral College contests if this scheme had been in place. It shows that the 2000 result would not have been changed, but the 2004 outcome would have been even more favourable to the Republican candidate, because his vote total was much more efficiently distributed than his opponent's.     

The Effects of Mayoral Power on Urban Fiscal Policy

Can mayors of American cities overcome the enormous constraints of environmental forces to exert some control over municipal spending priorities? Despite case study evidence suggesting that mayors can and do influence public policy making, the expectation of this research was that mayoral power in a comparative research design likely would not have a pronounced effect on city spending. Using multiple regression techniques and various socioeconomic, demographic, and political variables, the analysis indeed showed that mayoral strength was not a significant predictor of municipal expenditures for 1987. The findings also revealed only slight differences in the way the mayoral power variable operated when cities were divided by city government form (mayor-council vs. council-manager). The research did demonstrate that mayoral power was most likely to be effective in controlling city spending among localities having partisan ballots.     

Political Dynasties in Thailand: The Recent Picture after the 2011 General Election

This article seeks to understand the patterns of family-based politics in Thailand’s 2011 House of Representatives election. The key question is whether the political dynasty, a sequence of political leaders who are considered members of the same family, is still a determining factor in Thai elections, and if so, to what extent compared to the past. Drawing on a rich set of data collected from election results between 1979 and 2011, this article argues that the political roles and influences of many political dynasties have become more complicated and have tended to increase, although some have experienced defeat in elections. The article finds that while belonging to a political dynasty could give new dynastic faces a better chance of winning a House election in their constituency than their non-dynastic counterparts, the most influential factor for electoral candidates in winning a House of Representatives election is belonging to the Pheu Thai Party or the Democrat Party. This article thus suggests that one of the best ways to avoid the monopoly of one or a few political families in Thai politics is to empower and support party members and eligible voters to meaningfully engage in political parties’ affairs and activities.     

Surge and Decline: The Impact of Changes in Voter Turnout on the 2010 Senate Elections

Enthusiasm among Republican voters and a lack thereof among Democrats was cited by many post-election analyses as a contributing factor to the outcome of the 2010 midterm elections. Analysis of the aggregate county level voter turnout and results of the 2010 Senate races provides strong evidence of (1) a sharper decline in turnout from 2008 to 2010 in areas in which Barack Obama did well in 2008 and (2) a significant relationship between turnout changes from 2006–2010 and 2008–2010 and changes in the vote share of Democratic Senate candidates in 2010. In addition, a test of the referendum theory of midterm elections shows that declining presidential approval ratings, but not economic indicators, are predictive of the Democratic vote share in 2010. Despite previous findings that midterm and presidential electorates do not fundamentally differ, this analysis of the 2010 Senate elections provides evidence that differential turnout among core and peripheral voters is an important part of the explanation for the surge that occurs in presidential elections and the subsequent decline in voter participation during midterms.     

Five Factions,Two Parties: Caucus Membership in the House of Representatives, 1994–2002

This paper examines the extent of ideological cohesion and distinction of two Republican congressional factions (the conservative Republican Study Committee and the moderate Republican Main Street Partnership) and three Democratic congressional caucuses (the moderate Blue Dog Coalition, the liberal Congressional Black Caucus, and the liberal Congressional Progressive Caucus) in the House of Representatives from 1994 to 2002. Whereas much of the literature on congressional caucuses has focused on the reasons members join such groups and the policy and political orientations of those groups, this paper examines how much unity exists in the voting behavior of the members of Congress who join caucuses in comparison to their fellow partisans not in a faction. Although political parties are still a major unifying force for their respective party members, we do find that factional members are more ideologically cohesive than are nonfactional members. Joining a faction is not an insignificant activity for members. Factions allow like-minded colleagues to come together and vote on common issues, at times against direction of their party.     

Managing midterm vacancies: institutional design and partisan strategy in the Australian parliament, 1901–2013

This article explores how replacement rules for midterm vacancies affect legislative turnover in the context of majoritarian and proportional electoral systems. The differing electoral rules and replacement procedures for the two chambers of the Australian parliament over more than a century permit an analysis of the complex interplay between institutional rules, party strategy, and patterns of representation between 1901 and 2013. Since 1901, the Australian House of Representatives has been committed to single member electoral systems and by-elections for filling midterm vacancies, but major changes to both the electoral system and midterm replacement rules for the Australian Senate have played a critical role in enhancing party control of Senate careers.     

Stiffening Abe: William Pitt Fessenden and the Role of the Broker Politician in the Civil War Congress

The difficult but by no means dysfunctional relationship between President Abraham Lincoln and Congress remains an understudied aspect of Civil War history. Indeed, it is impossible to arrive at a comprehensive or convincing explanation for Union victory until that relationship is limned more precisely. This article contends that U.S. Senator William Pitt Fessenden (1806–69) played a critical mediating role in the wartime Congress. He did so firstly in his capacities as chair of the Senate finance committee and close associate of U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase and secondly as a public supporter of executive war powers. Although the influential Maine Republican had serious doubts about the effectiveness of the Lincoln administration, his determination to quash the southern rebellion and considerable powers of self‐restraint enabled him to act as an important and constructive broker between the White House and the fractious Republicans on Capitol Hill.     

The Changing Roles of House Party Leadership Organizations: The House Republican Policy Committee

More than 100 members in each of the two House party caucuses participate in the parties’ formal organizations—the extended party leadership. What purposes do these institutional components of the parties serve, and how and why have they changed over the last three decades? This article begins to answer these questions through a case study of the Republican Policy Committee based on primary documents as well as quantitative analysis. I show that the Republican leadership has used the committee for participation, coordination, and communication functions within the Conference, but that the roles of the committee have changed substantially in response to strengthening party government conditions, GOP majority status, heightened competition for control of the House, and the individual goals of key Republican leaders. Among other changes, the committee became more important for coordinating policy positions and strategy during the 1980s, but the strong, centralized majority leadership in the 1990s diminished this important coordination function and left the committee with an emphasis on partisan communication.     

Gender and Patterns of Roll Call Voting in the U.S. Senate

Previous studies of gender and representation at the state legislative level and in the U.S. House of Representatives have shown that women tend to be more liberal than their male colleagues and are more likely to support women's issues. Because of the limited presence of women in the body over the years, there is scant empirical evidence to confirm whether this pattern is present in the U.S. Senate. Sound theoretical basis indicates that the institutional rules of the Senate, the Senate's individualistic culture, the Senate's six-year election timetable, and the national profile of U.S. senators may create conditions that allow gender differences in roll call voting to be more easily detected than is possible in more rigidly structured institutions such as the U.S. House. This study employs a longitudinal design that pools roll call voting data from the 103rd Congress through the 110th Congress to determine whether female senators compile substantively different policy records than their male colleagues. The results indicate that gender does systematically influence roll call voting patterns in the Senate. However, it is largely a function of female Republicans voting in a less conservative fashion than male Republicans on the basic left-right policy space and on a smaller set of issues of importance to women.     

The year of the insurgents: the 2008 US presidential campaign

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush's unpopularity at home and abroad and the looming threat of recession would have made a gripping drama of the 2008 presidential election campaign even without the ground‐breaking emergence of the first credible black and female candidates for the White House. But the defeat of the Democratic establishment's front‐runner, Hillary Clinton, by a little‐known freshman Senator of mixed ancestry suggested that this was to be the year of the insurgent, just as the Republicans rallied to the least loyal and most contentious of their candidates, the maverick Senator John McCain. The extraordinarily attractive and articulate Senator Barack Obama re‐wrote the rule book on winning primaries and caucuses with the help of Silicon Valley and an unprecedented turnout among black and young voters, before veering sharply to the centre once the nomination was secured. Orthodoxy returned at the conventions, with Obama picking a safe centrist as running mate and McCain choosing a Christian conservative, although generating great excitement by nominating a woman and undermining the usual democrat advantage among female voters. And for all the talk of a ‘new politics’, the year of the insurgents came down at the end, as US elections usually do, to a handful of swing states and the money and organization to win them.     

Geography and Election Results: Disproportionality and Bias at the 1993–2004 Elections to the Australian House of Representatives

The Alternative Vote system used for elections to the Australian House of Representatives is generally believed to disadvantage the Australian Labor Party in contests with the Liberal and National parties. However, most analyses on which such conclusions are based over-simplify the situation by not separating out the translation of votes into seats according to whether the election outcome in a district is determined using the first-preference or two-party preferred (2PP) votes. Analyses of bias at five recent elections which recognise that separation find little bias against either party in the districts where the determination used the 2PP votes (i.e. no candidate received a majority of the first preferences), but considerable bias in those where the outcome was decided on first-preferences. Furthermore, that bias was not in one direction, but rather favoured the largest party in each of those contests. The reason for this is identified in the geography of support for the two parties, which produces the equivalent of a ‘cracked gerrymander’ in sufficient districts to have a significant impact on the outcome.     

When nationalism beats populism: The secessionist movement in Texas

Six members of the Republican Party have presented and supported a House Bill in the Texas House of Representatives proposing a referendum to decide whether Texas should leave the United States. This initiative has been seen as a success by the Texas Nationalist Movement, who has been advocating for Texit for years. Applying frame analysis on an extended corpus of Texas nationalist sympathisers' statements, this article empirically explores the discourse of the Texas Nationalist Movement. The analysis contributes to recent literature on new nationalist movements and shows that Texas nationalism articulates its discourse around a homogeneous and exclusionary national conception based on the need to achieve independence as a solution to the country's problems.