Parties, Preferences, and the House Whip Process
Courtney L. Behringer
C. Lawrence Evans
Elizabeth R. Materese
Department of Government
College of William and Mary
Williamsburg, VA 23187-8795
Prepared for presentation at the annual meeting of the Southern Political Science Association,
Atlanta, GA, January 5-7, 2006.
Parties, Preference, and the House Whip Process1
This paper addresses perhaps the central conceptual and empirical dispute in
contemporary congressional studies; the role played by parties and leaders in the House
legislative process. Existing theories are mostly rooted in the spatial model of legislative choice,
and generally assume that the preferences of members are fixed and determined exogenously to
the legislative process. Our argument is that much of what constitutes “influence” on Capitol
Hill occurs during the process through which legislators formulate their policy positions, and
thus arguments based on fixed or exogenously determined preferences cannot adequately capture
the impact of parties and leaders in Congress.
In this paper, we also address a significant empirical limitation in the scholarly literature
about congressional partisanship. Most often, scholars use roll-call based indicators to measure
the policy preferences of individual legislators. These scores do capture essential features of the
structure of the roll call record. But all vote-based indicators are themselves affected by the full
range of forces that shape roll call decisions (party, constituency pressures, group lobbying,
member views about what constitutes good public policy, and so on). As a result, it is difficult to
use these measures to disentangle the effects of member preferences, parties, and other
influences on legislative behavior. Instead, we rely on private polls (called “whip counts”) taken
by House party leaders prior to major floor votes. The result, we believe, is a more accurate and
nuanced portrayal of member decision making on the House floor. We find that parties matter in
the House legislative process, but also that the mechanisms of leadership influence are not fully
captured by existing scholarship.
There are four sections to this paper. The first places our research within the broader
literature about the congressional parties and reviews the nature of our evidence. We report on a
1
Preparation of this paper was assisted by financial support from the National Science Foundation (Award SES0417759) and the Roy R. Charles Center of the College of William and Mary. The data used here were primarily
gathered from the Congressional Papers of Thomas S. Foley, Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections,
Holland Library, Washington State University; and The Robert H. Michel Papers, Dirksen Congressional Center,
Pekin, Illinois. Ed Weber, Holly Tate, Laila Miletic-Vejzovic, and Frank Mackaman were very helpful in
facilitating the archival portions of the research. Former Speakers Thomas S. Foley, D-Wash., and James Wright,
D-Tex., kindly agreed to be interviewed about partisan coalition building during the era under focus in this paper.
The argumentation has benefited from exchanges with Joe Cooper, Larry Dodd, Rick Hall, and Frances Lee. Most
important, we thank the two dozen William and Mary students who have been members of “Team Whip Count” and
helped translate the archival evidence into usable quantitative data. They are listed by name at
http://clevan.people.wm.edu/whip.php.
1
broader project that makes use of archival records from more than 700 whip counts conducted by
congressional party leaders since World War II. In this paper, we focus on two-dozen issues
from 1977-80 upon which both parties asked nearly identical questions of their members during
the whip process. Section 2 examines the way members respond to party whip counts and the
linkages that exist between poll responses and roll call behavior. Even though the 1977-80
period occurred before the current era of high partisan polarization in Congress, we uncover
compelling evidence of party effects in the process through which members form position in the
days and weeks prior to major floor votes. Section 3 is an aggregate analysis of the coalitionbuilding efficacy of Democratic and Republican leaders for the legislative items under focus.
Particular emphasis is placed on leadership strategies and effectiveness on the National Energy
Policy Act of 1978, perhaps the most significant domestic policy measures considered on Capitol
Hill during the late 1970s.
A key argument is that research about the congressional parties has
been excessively focused on the role of the majority and needs to give greater consideration to
the partisan minority. In Section 4, we conclude by briefly summarizing our main contributions
and the implications for research about the congressional parties.
1. Goals, Preferences, and Whip Operations
The early 1990s was a transformative period in legislative scholarship. Earlier research
tended to focus on member goals as the main theoretical primitives in conceptualizing about
legislative behavior. Mayhew (1973) famously explored how much of what occurs in Congress
is consistent with the goal of reelection. In his landmark study of committees, Fenno (1973)
argued that members are motivated by three main goals; reelection, promoting good public
policy, and securing influence within the chamber. Kingdon (1973, 1989) found that the roll call
decisions of House members were conditioned by Fenno’s goals, subject to the complexity and
uncertainty that characterizes the political process. By “goals,” these scholars primarily were
referring to the broader ends of political behavior in conjunction with the audiences a legislator
hoped to please.2 Member goals served as a transitional concept between the more
2
Reelection seekers aim to stay in office and the constituency is the main audience. Policy-oriented members
attempt to shape policy outcomes and the audience is comprised of the legislator and others who share her interests
and views (e.g., political activists). The influence goal concerns the accumulation of power and other colleagues are
the primary audience. The concept of goal, then, is not easily distinguished from the broader environment of
decision making (but see Fenno 1973, Chapter 2).
2
sociologically-oriented conceptualizations of Congress popular in the 1950s and 1960s and the
rational choice theorizing that has since come to dominate the field.
During the 1980s, scholars increasingly turned to spatial representations of legislative
behavior. There are many different applications of the spatial model to Congress and we do not
want to over-generalize.3 But rather than member goals, the main ingredients are the
“preferences” of legislators over concrete policy alternatives. A central assumption is that
preferences and alternatives can be arrayed along one or more underlying dimensions of
evaluation, such as the basic liberal-conservative spectrum. Other ingredients include premises
about behavior (e.g., sincere versus sophisticated voting), rules and procedures (e.g., the
assignment of agenda prerogatives), and the distribution of information. Early applications of
the spatial model mostly relied on anecdotes and stylized facts to illustrate empirical relevance,
but by the end of the 1980s scholars were regularly confronting these models with systematic
data about Congress. Much of the empirical work that ensued examined whether party leaders
exert a significant and independent impact over legislative outcomes. Indeed, the way the
question of party influence is now framed and the kinds of empirical tests that are most often
conducted are firmly rooted in the basic logic of the spatial model.
There are several competing perspectives. First consider the majoritarian perspective,
which is associated in particular with the work of Krehbiel (1998) and is explicitly spatial in its
foundations. The House, according to Krehbiel, is first and foremost a majority-rule institution.
If the preferences of members can be arrayed as points along a single ideological continuum;
members are fully informed about the main ingredients of the legislative game; and they vote for
the proposal closest to their policy preferences; then the predicted outcome is the alternative
most preferred by the median legislator in the full chamber. At least within the House, the
middle should rule and party organizations are at most a secondary feature of the legislative
process.
Other scholars, in contrast, maintain that under the right conditions majority party leaders
in the chamber do have the resources necessary to move policy outcomes away from the
preferences of the floor median and in the direction of median viewpoints within the majority
caucus. It is feasible to devise a spatial model of legislative choice that allows for learning,
persuasion, and the emergence of member positions over time. But the scholars who have
3
For a good reviews, consult Krehbiel (1988) and Shepsle and Weingast (1995).
3
attempted to incorporate parties into the spatial model typically take the policy preferences of
legislators as given. According to the conditional party government perspective of Aldrich and
Rohde, when preferences within the majority party are homogeneous and there are significant
differences in viewpoints between the parties, there may be incentives for rank-and-file members
of the majority to provide their leaders with the formal powers necessary to shift outcomes from
the floor toward the majority party median (see Rohde, 1991, and Aldrich and Rohde, 1998).
Alternatively, according to the party cartel perspective of Cox and McCubbins, the shared
electoral fate of majority party members may lead them to provide the leadership with the power
to block from the agenda issues that would divide their party and undermine its “name brand”
with the public (Cox and McCubbins, 1993, 2005). Alternatives and outcomes preferred by the
chamber median never make it onto the floor agenda. Although all of these scholars recognize
that parties and leaders may influence how legislators make up their minds on major issues, their
focus is more on other features of the Congress (especially agenda control in committee and on
the floor) for explaining why parties matter. And their common benchmark for establishing
party influence is whether or not policies diverge from the preferences of the floor median
toward viewpoints within the majority party.
At least since the early 1990s, this manner of framing the question of party power has
shaped the research agendas of empirically-minded scholars of Congress. The literature here is
also extensive and we do not want to over-generalize. But scholars often use data from roll call
votes on the House and Senate floor to estimate member ideological preferences; relate these
estimates to certain aspects of legislative behavior (often roll call decisions); and then attempt to
make inferences about strategy and influence (the relative importance of leadership pressure
versus member preferences, and so on). Typically, the goal is to isolate a significant effect for
party above and beyond the effects of preferences as measured by a roll-call based ideological
score.
There are obvious problems with this approach to measurement. For one, all vote-based
measures, including the DW-NOMINATE values estimated by Poole and Rosenthal, are
themselves determined in part by partisan imperatives.4 Poole and Rosenthal (1997) demonstrate
that the vast majority of roll calls cast on Capitol Hill can be effectively structured with two
4
It should be emphasized that Poole and Rosenthal know exactly what they are tapping with the DW-NOMINATE
measures. Their primary focus in Poole and Rosenthal (1997), for instance, is on the evolution of voting patterns
over time.
4
underling dimensions of evaluation. Indeed, for most of congressional history a single
ideological dimension will suffice. We also know that party leaders seek to maintain their
positions by minimizing conflict within their own caucuses and by winning on the floor
(Sinclair, 1981). Leaders can promote both goals by focusing the floor agenda on items that
unite the majority caucus internally and by convincing potentially recalcitrant legislators to toe
the party line on roll calls. Throughout American history, the policy programs of the two parties
have generally reflected the main ideological fault lines of the day. Thus, it comes as no surprise
that there is an enduring ideological structure to the roll call record. Indeed, this structure is in
part a consequence of party strategizing and influence.
For purposes of illustration, consider a standard story of party leadership influence, which
might go something like this. As a major floor vote nears, members are cross-pressured by party
and constituency concerns and lean toward voting with the district and against the party. In
response, the leadership attempts to convince wavering legislators to approach the issue from an
ideological rather than a district perspective by emphasizing national concerns during the
lobbying process, making promises and threats, and so on. As a result, the cross-pressured
members choose to downplay local interests in their political calculations, cast ideologicallymotivated votes, and the party position carries the day. If we use a member’s relative placement
within the ideological structure of the roll call record as a measure of her preferences, the
preference indicator will perfectly predict behavior leaving little variance for party to explain –
even though partisan imperatives determined behavior.5 The scholarly community would
benefit from access to systematic evidence about the policy positions of legislators prior to the
end of leadership lobbying on significant roll calls (Fenno, 1985).6 With such data, researchers
would be able to gauge the changes that occur in member positions during the lobbying process
and also whether these changes are toward the leadership position.
For both conceptual and empirical reasons, then, we believe that legislative scholars
should look beyond the simple spatial model and focus sustained attention on the process
through which legislators formulate policy positions. Through extensive research in the papers
5
Lee (2005) finds that much of the partisan/ideological behavior that we observe on Capitol Hill occurs on issues
that do not inherently divide liberals from conservatives.
6
More sophisticated research designs and estimation techniques probably will not be sufficient to produce a
consensus about the importance of the congressional parties based on the roll call record alone. Consult, for
example, the exchange between Snyder and Groseclose, 2000, 2001; McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal, 2001; and Cox
and Poole, 2002.
5
of former congressional leaders, one of us (Evans) has gathered extensive archival records for
nearly all of the whip counts conducted by House Democrats from 1955-86 and House
Republicans from 1973-80 and 1989-90; important periods of transition in the role of party
leaders in Congress. The records include completed whip pads, memos and lists, formal tally
sheets, completed House worksheets (small pamphlets with the names and positions of members
denoted by state), lists of members that the leadership is targeting for lobbying, the names of the
individuals tapped to do the lobbying, and other evidence about the coalition-building process.
As of January 2006, over 10,000 pages of archival records had been photocopied for the project.
Several scholars have already produced important studies of the House Democratic whip
operation, including examinations of the results of past whip counts.7 Ripley (1964, 1967)
analyzed the whip process from 1962 to 1964, providing a highly valuable treatment of the early
institutional development of the office. Dodd (1978; and with Sullivan, 1981) examined dozens
of House Democratic counts from the 93rd Congress (1973-74); his studies are an important
portrait of the whip system during a time of transition for the congressional parties. More
recently, Burden and Frisby (2004) used whip count records from 1971-72 to evaluate the
coalition building effectiveness of the Democratic leadership. These studies all focus on
relatively short time intervals prior to the 1980s emergence of strong party leadership in
Congress, however, and their empirical reach does not extend to the Republicans or the Senate.
The broader project of which this paper is a part is far more comprehensive in scope; the aim is
to conduct a systematic analysis of partisan coalition building over many decades of recent
congressional history.
Whip Logistics
How does the whip process work? For several decades, the party whip process in the
House generally has commenced with a request from the top party leadership for a count of
member preferences on a pending matter. Within the House leadership structure, the whip is the
third ranking position on the majority side (behind the Speaker and Majority Leader) and second
ranking for the minority (behind the Minority Leader). The Whip communicates the request
(including a deadline for completing the poll) to members of the extended whip organization for
7
Sullivan has also authored a number of important studies using data from presidential head counts, which resemble
whip counts in certain ways (e.g., Sullivan 1990a, 1990b). See also Covington (1987).
6
the relevant party. In the House, the Democratic whip operation is comprised of about two
dozen deputy, zone, and “at large” whips. The GOP operation includes a smaller number of
regional and assistant regional whips. Both parties divide their memberships into zones (or
regional areas), with a member of the extended whip operation assigned responsibility for
tracking viewpoints in that area. The two party whip teams seldom share information, focus on
preferences within their own caucuses, and often poll on different matters.
Once the request for a whip count is made, the zone whips contact the offices of the
members within their areas, either directly or through staff, and ask for their positions on the
item being polled. The question being polled is almost always phrased so that a “yes” response
is in favor of the position of the leadership. As they hear from their colleagues, the zone whips
report back to the Whip with their tallies, singling out particular members as potential problems
or needing contact or persuasion from the leadership. The results of the initial tallies often are
recorded on small pads, with a separate sheet used for each zone. Initial reports typically include
many nonresponders; members who decline comment or are unreachable. As the vote nears, the
number of nonresponders drops and positions evolve. That information also is forwarded to the
Whip’s office. At this point, the information in the whip pads is often transferred into list or
memo form for ready reference during meetings of the leadership.
Based on our catalogue of polled questions, there has been a fairly steady increase in the
number of whip counts over time, ranging from about 20 per Congress for House Democrats
during the 1950s to about 50 per Congresses for the party during the 1980s (Evans 2004). For
both parties, there was a significant spike in the number of counts during the late 1970s. Indeed,
the Democrats conducted over 100 whip counts during the 95th Congress alone (1977-78). For
the two Congresses for which data from both parties are now available (1977-80), the majority
Democrats conducted almost twice as many whip counts as did the minority Republicans. The
difference is not surprising. The majority party is primarily responsible for managing the floor
agenda, and, as a result, the informational value of whip intelligence should be higher for the
majority than it is for the minority.
As mentioned, at this point we have only compiled whip count records for both
Democrats and Republicans for 1977-80. During the period, House Democratic leaders polled
their fellow partisans on over 150 distinct questions and Republican leaders contacted their
members on about 70 questions. In selecting legislation to whip, party leaders tend to focus on
7
high visibility items that touch on major party priorities and for which the outcome is not a
completely forgone conclusion. Not surprisingly, there is considerable overlap in the legislation
targeted for whip activity by Democratic and Republican leaders. Indeed, almost all of the bills
that generated GOP whip activities during 1977-80 were also the subject of one or more counts
by the Democrats. The specific questions posed on a measure by Democrats and Republicans
often differed, however, reflecting divergent party interests and strategic concerns.
In this paper, we focus on the polled items from 1977-80 for which Democratic and
Republicans asked their members identical or nearly identical questions. We do so for two main
reasons. By most accounts the 95th and 96th Congresses constitute an unfriendly period for
uncovering party effects. Although the Democratic majorities at the time were very large (292
members in the 95th Congress and 277 members in the 96th), the Democratic Caucus was rife
with divisions.8 The traditional New Deal coalition that had structured the national party since
the 1930s was withering and the 1980s resurgence of mass partisanship had yet to emerge
(Bartels 2000, Hetherington, 2001). The proportion of party unity roll calls (floor votes on
which a majority of one party votes “yes” and a majority of the other votes “no”) was just 37.3
percent in the 95th Congress and 47.2 percent in the 96th; significantly less than the 67.4 percent
that characterized the 104th Congress (1995-96), arguably the recent high-water mark for
conditional party government (Aldrich and Rohde, 1998). Moreover, Jimmy Carter was in the
White House during 1977-90 and is not generally regarded as an effective legislative president
(Jones, 1988). Democratic congressional leaders could not count on Carter to help them build
majorities behind the party program. If we can uncover systematic evidence of party influence
and efficacious coalition building by the leadership during this era, the result will be strong
support for assertions that the congressional parties matter in internal decision making.
There also is a more practical reason for our focus on 1977-80. Only within this time
period do we have coalition-building data for both House Democrats and House Republicans.
To our knowledge, few scholars have systematically evaluated majority and minority party
influence on a common set of issues.9 Four decades of social choice theorizing suggests that
floor majorities in legislatures can be highly unstable. It is possible, then, that the vote
mobilization efforts of the majority leadership are counter-balanced to some extent by the
8
9
See Cooper and Sieberer (2005) for an analysis of the linkages between party size, cohesion, and success.
Jenkins, Crespin, and Carson (2005) is a noteworthy exception.
8
lobbying activities of the minority party and its interest group allies. Integrating data from both
parties also enables us to rigorously test for the impact of partisan differences on the roll call
choices of wavering members, controlling for other factors. More generally, minority party
leaders (within their own caucuses) have certain of the prerogatives afforded to the majority
leadership. As much as possible, we believe, the leading theories of party in Congress should be
evaluated with evidence from both the majority and minority parties.
2. Whip Counts and Roll Calls
Table 1 is a list of the items on which Democratic and Republican leaders posed the same
questions to their members during 1977-80. There were dozens of additional bills on which both
party whip systems were active, but they focused on different aspects of the legislation. The
Republicans might poll on key amendments from minority party members, while the Democrats
might emphasize the rule and final passage votes. In contrast, the items in Table 1 constitute the
legislative equivalent of a “jump ball.” Usually, leaders only conduct whip counts on major
priorities where the outcome is somewhat in doubt. Whip counts are time consuming, require
the investment of nontrivial political capital, and can aggravate rank-and-file members if
conducted indiscriminately. When both parties poll on the same question, the implication is that
the matter is of major importance and both sides view it as at least potentially winnable.
Included in Table 1 are longstanding issues of contention between the two parties; the minimum
wage, weapons programs, campaign finance, and also Jimmy Carter’s landmark proposal to
overhaul U.S. energy policy.
The column at the right denotes the party position that prevailed on the floor. In one
case, the Amtrak reorganization, the outcome is categorized as ambiguous. Here, the Republican
leadership formally opposed the amendment in question, which was offered on the floor by Al
Gore, D-Tenn. But the Carter administration was also lobbying against the amendment, and
based on documentation in the whip files it is clear that Democratic leaders did not take a formal
position on the matter. As a result, the defeat of Gore’s amendment was a GOP victory, but not
really a loss for the Democrats. The outcome of the Budget Targets fight is categorized as a
victory for both leaderships. Prior to the May 1977 roll call, Democratic and GOP leaders struck
a compromise that eventually passed by a margin of 221-177. However, the vast majority of
9
Republican members broke with their leadership and joined 70 Democrats in opposing the
accord.
Of the remaining 22 items, thirteen (59.1 percent) are victories for the majority
Democrats and nine are wins for the minority party. As mentioned, the Democratic Caucus was
very large during the 95th and 96th Congress (approaching 300 members) and a win rate of less
than 60 percent may strike some observers as unimpressive. But it should be emphasized that
the policy disputes in Table 1 do not constitute a random sample of floor fights during the period.
Indeed, they are not even a random sample of the more partisan fights that occurred in the
chamber. Instead, the fact that the same questions were whipped by both parties means that the
items were judged to be significantly in play and that both party organizations (and their interest
group allies) were actively engaged. Especially given the significant cleavages within the
Democratic Caucus of the day, the outcomes in Table 1 do suggest a degree of efficacious
coalition building by the Democratic leadership.
Table 2 provides summary information about the challenges confronting the two
leaderships at the beginning of the floor endgame on the jointly polled items. Included are the
standard response positions (yes, leaning yes, undecided, leaning no, and no). Remaining
responses (no response, no comment, unreachable, etc.) are collapsed into a single “other”
category to simplify matters. We also have organized the data so that a “yes” response is always
in favor of the position embraced by the relevant leadership.10 There are some noteworthy
differences between the parties. In percentage terms, the GOP “base” as revealed by the whip
counts (“yes” plus “leaning yes” responders) was significantly higher than was the case for the
majority Democrats (67.1 percent versus 54.5 percent). The difference needs to be considered
from the perspective of party size. The party support percentages in Table 2 translate into 150160 Democratic votes and 96-106 GOP votes. Still, the Republicans were relatively more united
even though the overall levels of party unity on all roll calls during the relevant Congresses were
10
It is not unusual for the archival records of whip operations to include multiple drafts of a count, with the
positions of some members changing from draft to draft as the lobbying process continues and the roll call nears.
Indeed, for some issues five or more lists of the results may be compiled in the day or two before the relevant vote.
The main changes from earlier to later drafts typically are a reduction in the number of nonresponders. To simplify
matters, when the positions of members change across drafts, we code the position that maximizes the level of
response ambiguity. If a member is “undecided” on one draft and “leaning yes” on the next, the position is coded
as “undecided.” If there is a tie in terms of distance from undecided (e.g., shifts form “no” to “yes,” or from
“leaning no” to “leaning yes”), then we coded the response that was furthest from the leadership position. A
nonresponse is coded if and only if the member is nonresponsive across all drafts.
10
similar across parties.11 Again, whip count data are useful in part because they focus our
attention on the items that are directly relevant to the party agendas. Moreover, the reduced
Democratic loyalty on the counts does not derive from member ambivalence about party
priorities. The percentage of legislators who are “undecided” is actually very similar across
parties (16.1% for Democrats and 15.1% for Republicans), as is the proportion in the “other”
category (11.1% and 9.1%, respectively). The main difference is in the percentage answering
“no” and “leaning no,” which is almost twice as high for the majority Democrats.
How successful were the majority and minority leaderships at retaining their respective
bases and at persuading undecideds and potential defectors to toe the party line? Table 3
portrays roll call support for the party position for the 23 jointly polled items that resulted in a
vote.12 “Yes” and “leaning yes” responses are combined into a single category (Y/LY), as are
“no” and “leaning no” responses (N/LN). Not surprisingly, for both parties the vast majority of
the members in the Y/LY category ended up supporting the position of the relevant leadership.
Still, there are some exceptions, especially for the majority Democrats. On four of the measures,
twenty or more Democrats responded as “yes” or “leaning yes” on the whip poll but ended up
voting the other way. The political context changed or opposition lobbying dominated the vote
gathering efforts of the Democratic leadership. For both parties, most of the N/LN responders
eventually voted against the position of the relevant leadership. But there also are some
exceptions here. Democrats were somewhat successful in converting likely defectors on two of
the minimum wage votes, funding for the B-1 bomber, the foreign intelligence bill, the natural
gas substitute, the procedure for the energy conference report, and measures relating to PAC
contributions, hospital costs, and revenue sharing. On six of the items – financial ethics,
minimum wage indexing, the natural gas procedure, windfall profits, hospital costs, and revenue
sharing – the Republicans and their interest group allies actually were able to convert all or
almost all of the N/LN responders to the party position.
Party leaders tend to view the undecided members as most “in play” on whipped
legislation. For the undecideds, the most striking characteristic of Table 3 is the level of
11
The average percent of Democrats voting the party position on all party unity roll calls was 72.7% in the 95th
Congress and 76.6% in the 96th. For the GOP, the analogous percentages were 76.1% and 79.0%. The party unity
data were gathered by Joe Cooper and Garry Young. See http://www.jhu.edu/polysci/faculty/cooper/papers.htm.
12
For purposes of comparison, the Budget Targets and Amtrak Reorganization items are included. There is no entry
for Universal Voter Registration: The Democrats pulled the measure in part because of unpromising whip count
results and no roll call occurred.
11
variation that exists from item to item. Democratic and Republican leaders, for instance,
retaining almost all of their undecided members on the financial ethics roll call, but the
undecideds within both parties split fairly evenly on the labor law revision, consumer protection,
and the Panama Canal measure. There also are potentially instructive asymmetries across the
parties. While the Democratic undecideds were divided in their roll call choices on the hospital
cost measure, for example, Republican leaders were able to retain 34 of the 38 GOP members
who responded as “undecided” on the whip count. Similar issue specific variation is apparent for
the “other” category.”13
In Table 4, we present the party retention rates for each response category, aggregated
across the 21 jointly whipped items for which the parties took divergent positions and there was
a roll call. Four points are important. First, as would be expected, the party support rates for
both parties fall the further the whip count response is from “yes.” Second, for both parties the
support levels for members in the “other” category is less than the support levels overall. Most
of the entries categorized as “other” were for members who failed to respond to the relevant
whip poll, suggesting that nonresponse behavior is partially strategic. Member who are potential
opponents of the party position apparently are disproportionately likely to duck questions about
their intentions from the whips. Third, both parties converted a larger portion of the “no” and
“leaning no” responders than they lost from the “yes” and “leaning yes” categories, which
strongly suggests that the vote gathering efforts of the leadership are efficacious. The difference
is especially striking for the GOP. While only about 2.5 percent of initial supporters defected on
the associated roll calls, about 43 percent of “no” and “leaning no” responders ended up staying
on the partisan reservation. Fourth, across all categories of poll response, the Republicans were
more successful (in percentages terms) at retaining their members. Once again, inferences about
the relative success of Democratic and Republican Party leaders during the lobbying endgame
need to be tempered by the significant differences in party size. In both Congresses, there were
about twice as many Democrats as Republicans in the chamber.
The results in Tables 3 and 4 are highly suggestive that party leaders indeed make a
difference in the coalition-building process. According to the spatial model, the probability that
13
The issue-specific variation in relative party retention and conversion rates may be related to differences across
policy areas in party advantage a la Petrocik’s (1996) concept of “issue ownership.” Alternatively, the differences
may relate to aspects of the procedural context on a measure. These questions will be explored in further research,
both for the jointly polled items in 1977-80 and for the hundreds of additional questions for which whip data are
available.
12
a member will be undecided on a roll call should be symmetrically distributed over the position
(on the underlying ideological continuum) that is located midway between the two alternatives
under consideration (Poole, 2005). If the question is about final passage, for instance, the two
alternatives under consideration are the bill as amended and the status quo of existing law. The
members who most prefer an outcome (along the relevant ideological dimension) located
midway between the bill and the status quo should be most likely to be indifferent and thus
answer as “undecided” on the whip count. Based on “preferences” alone, the likelihood of a
“yes” or “no” roll call for these members should be about the same. Yet, for both Democrats and
Republicans, undecided legislators break disproportionately toward their party positions.
Of course, it is possible (although unlikely) that the Democratic undecideds all have
policy preferences located near the midpoint but still somewhat closer to the position of the
Democratic leadership. Similarly, it is feasible that GOP undecideds have preferences near the
point of indifference, but still falling on the side closest to the Republican positions. As a result,
although highly suggestive, the loyalty rates of undecided members in Table 4 are not definitive
evidence of party effects. Moreover, about 40 percent of Democratic undecideds and 30 percent
of Republican undecideds ended up voting against their party positions. We need to dig a little
deeper.
Table 5 reports the results of a multivariate analysis of the voting choices of undecided
members pooled across the two parties. The dependent variable is dichotomous, taking the value
of one if a member voted the Democratic position and otherwise is zero. Only observations from
the 21 questions for which the party leadership took clearly divergent positions and a roll call
occurred are included. The independent variable of primary interest is party, which takes the
value of one if a member is a Democrat and zero if she is a Republican.
Our goal is to construct a “conservative” test and stack the decks against uncovering
party effects. As a result, we also consider three independent variables that are often used as
proxies for member “preferences” in the literature. The first is an indicator of constituency
ideology; voting patterns within the district at the presidential level. Here, we use percentage
support for Richard Nixon in 1972 because the relationship between presidential voting and
district ideology was murky in 1976 – Democrat Jimmy Carter was from Georgia and did
particularly well in the conservative south because of his strong ties to the region. Since voters
tend to elect candidates to Congress reflecting their ideological views, the representatives from
13
relatively conservative (pro-Nixon) districts should have policy preferences that are right of
center, with the opposite association holding for legislators representing liberal constituencies.
Along with constituency ideology, we also consider the placement of members along the
first and second dimension DW-NOMINATE scales. The first-dimension values, of course,
capture the relative liberalism of a legislator’s voting record as it relates to the roll calls cast by
other members of Congress. The substantive meaning of the second dimension scores varies
over time, but during the 1970s it chiefly captured regional conflicts between the north and south
(e.g., lingering disagreements over civil rights and increasingly over social issues). From 1990
onward, the second dimension scores are of limited value for predicting behavior, but in the
1970s the dimension was still consequential and needs to be included in our analysis.
Once again, we emphasize that the Poole-Rosenthal measures include party effects and
are themselves shaped by party agenda setting and leadership strategies. By including both
scores and the measure of constituency ideology, we are making it difficult for the party dummy
variable to exhibit an independent impact on roll call choice. Moreover, our focus is on member
decision making in the days and weeks prior to some of the most important and highly publicized
roll calls of the session. Much of the influence exerted by the extended party leadership may
occur at the agenda setting stage or during committee deliberations. Indeed, Cox and
McCubbins (2005) assert that party influence should be less pronounced when members make
decisions about floor roll calls because these decisions are so visible and open to scrutiny by
interest groups and constituents.
In Table 5, we analyze the effects of party on the roll call choices of undecided legislators
via three specifications. Notice that the parameter estimates for party are statistically significant
and have the expected sign across all three models. The coefficient for district conservatism has
the appropriate sign, but loses its statistical significance when the DW-NOMINATE measures
are included. Not surprisingly, both DW-NOMINATE scores are strong predictors of the vote.
Undecided members who are relatively conservative overall and tend toward the conservative
position on civil rights/social issues (larger DW-NOMINATE values along both dimensions) are
significantly less likely to break toward the Democrats.
Further evidence about the substantive importance of these factors – and about their
relationships to one other – is provided in Table 6 and Figure 1. If only party is included as a
predictor, the probability that an undecided member will vote the Democratic position is .285 for
14
Republicans and .606 for Democrats; a difference of .321. The impact of party drops marginally
when constituency ideology is added to the regression. When the two roll-call based indicators
of member ideology are added, the substantive impact of the party dummy variable falls to .127,
but is still substantial. Notice that for Republican undecideds, the probability of Democratic
support falls below the cut-point of .5 if the other variables are set to their means. For the
undecided Democrats, the probability of supporting the party position is above the .5 cut-point
(again, with other independent variables taking on their mean values). On the margin for
undecided members, then, party effects are large enough to make the difference between voting
the leadership position and breaking toward the opposition.
Figure 1 portrays the likelihood of a pro-Democratic vote for undecided members at
different points of the liberal-conservative continuum. The relationship is captured separately
for each party, setting other explanatory variables to their means. Across the entire ideological
dimension, the probability of a pro-Democrat vote is higher for Democratic members, but the
magnitude of the difference is largest for moderates located nears the midpoint of the PooleRosenthal measure.
We believe that the sharp drop-off in the estimated importance of party across the three
model specifications underscores why it is helpful to look beyond voting scores for gauging the
policy preferences of members. Significant party effects are imbedded in all roll-call based
measures of member ideology. As with voting scores, the positions that members adopt on nose
counts are themselves shaped by party pressures. The fact that a question is being polled signals
to legislators that the leadership is looking for support on the matter. And how a question is
phrased during the whip process generally signals the response that the leadership is looking for.
The whips also engage in persuasive efforts during the polling process. Still, party nose counts
are issue-specific and occur prior to the roll call. The polling records enable us to track
movements toward and away from the leadership position. Our analysis of these data shows that
partisan vote-gathering efforts matter.
3. Coalition Building Efficacy
Leadership influence may matter at the individual-level, but the aim of the whip process
is to affect the outcome of the legislative process. To what extent is the endgame lobbying
conducted by party leaders consequential for legislative outcomes on the floor? The minority
15
Republicans tended to retain a higher percentage of members in each response category, but the
reason might have been that Democrats needed to mobilize a much smaller portion of their
caucus to carry the day. Indeed, the leadership may tend to not lean on undecided member once
a coalition of majority size has been achieved. To do otherwise might waste valuable political
capital and create unnecessary problems for fellow partisans at home (King and Zeckhauser,
2003; Sinclair, 1995). Undecided or wavering Democrats may be less likely to stay loyal than is
the case for their GOP counterparts because their votes are less likely to be needed. We can
explore such possibilities by considering the size of the leadership base on each item in our
sample, the number of additional votes necessary to secure victory, and whether or not the
leadership was able to secure the needed increment. The information is provided in Table 7A for
Democrats and Table 7B for the GOP.14
In both panels of Table 7, the second column – “intra-party base” – refers to the number
of members within the relevant party who responded “yes” or “leaning yes” on the whip count
for an item. In Table 7A, the third column denotes the number of Republicans who told their
whips that they intended to (or were likely to) vote with the Democrats: These individuals
responded as “against” or “leaning against” the position of the GOP leadership during the whip
process. Similarly, the third column of Table 7B contains the number of Democrats who took
positions favorable to the GOP position on the relevant poll. In the panels of Table 7, the sum of
columns two and three yields the total base for the relevant leadership at the beginning of the
floor endgame.
Do Democratic leaders actually know how many Republicans are leaning toward the
Democratic position prior to floor action, and do Republican leaders have similar information
about likely Democratic defectors? Based on the archival record and existing scholarship, the
answer appears to be “yes.” Democratic leaders will seldom approach wavering Republicans
directly, but instead will ask a Democratic member who knows the GOP lawmaker personally to
make the contact for them.15 Alternatively, the leadership may approach members of the other
14
Because they do not affect the official results, paired votes are not included in this part of the analysis and the
treatment of the energy bill in Table 9.
15
During Newt Gingrich’s tenure as House GOP whip, 1989-94, he constructed a shadow whip system to gather
position intelligence from Democratic members. During the 101st Congress, the shadow organization was headed by
Olympia Snowe, Maine, and Thomas Bliley, Va., and included as assistants more than a dozen Republicans with ties
to members across the partisan aisle. These Republicans were each assigned a set of Democrats to contact with
whom they had geographic, committee, or personal links. Gingrich’s whip staff tabulated likely positions for
Democrats on at least a half dozen polled questions in 1989-90 alone. The organizational complexity of Gingrich’s
16
party through allied interest groups that are actively lobbying both sides of the aisle on the
matter. On labor issues, for example, the AFL-CIO collected position information about
Republicans, as well as Democrats, and (based on archival records) was willing to share the
political intelligence with friends in the Democratic leadership. The consumer movement
provided the Democratic leadership with similar data about Republican positions on the
consumer protection measure in 1977-78. In short, party leaders are generally able to weigh
support from both parties when estimating the magnitude of the vote-gathering challenge before
them. The fourth column in Tables 7A and 7B – “minimum necessary pickup” – is an estimate
of that challenge; the number of additional votes that the leadership needs to prevail on the
floor.16 The fifth column contains the actual pickup on each item, and the column at the far right
denotes the margin of victory or defeat.
For the 22 items (Universal Voter Registration is included here because we can gauge the
outcome), notice first that the Democratic leadership had the votes necessary to win on the floor
prior to endgame lobbing on two measures: Financial Ethics and the extension of ERA.17
Partisan imperatives may have been pivotal to the outcome by shaping member decision making
in committee or the initial positions that members took on the relevant whip counts. But on these
initiatives, the majority leadership already had the support necessary to prevail before endgame
lobbying began in earnest. The initial margins on the whip counts were small – nine votes and
seven votes, respectively – and the Democratic leadership obviously felt the need to shore up its
majorities. But for these items, the whip process probably did not alter the outcome. For the
Republican leadership, the minimum necessary pickup is positive across all 22 items in Table
7B.
We can usefully collapse the items that were “in play” into three categories based on the
magnitude of the challenge confronting the leadership: minimum necessary pickups of 30 votes
or less (low pickup items); minimum necessary pickups between 31 and 60 (medium pickup
items); and items for which the minimum necessary pickup was 61 votes or more (high pickup
items). Not surprisingly, there is a reverse symmetry across the two parties. Items that require
shadow system was unusual, however, and there is no evidence that House Democrats or Republicans maintained
anything of this magnitude during 1977-80.
16
The number of votes necessary to win is not necessarily 218 due to absences. We calculated the minimum
necessary pickup based on the number of members who actually cast “live” votes on the relevant roll call.
17
The base behind the position of the Democratic leadership was also sufficient to prevail on the Budget Targets
item, which is excluded from Tables 7A and 7B because the two leaderships were in agreement.
17
low pickups for the Democrats tend to call for high pickups by the GOP and vice-versa. Still, the
relationship is not perfect. Campaign finance reform and the Humphrey-Hawkins fullemployment measure were low pickup bills for the Democrats, but fell in the medium range for
the GOP. The foreign intelligence proposal was a medium pickup item for the Democrats and a
high pickup item for Republicans, mostly because of the high number of undecided members in
both parties unsure about the underlying policy issue.
Interestingly, success rates across the parties are roughly similar within pickup
categories. Among their respective low pickup items, the Democrats prevailed on six of seven
and the GOP on four of five. Among their high pickup items, the Democrats lost five of seven
and the GOP failed on nine of ten. The parties basically fought to a draw on their medium
pickup items – here, the Democrats won on three of six, while the Republicans prevailed on three
of the seven questions that fell in the middle category for them.
Clearly, the aggregate results do not suggest that the majority party dominates the
endgame lobbying process – at least not for jointly whipped items during the 1977-80 period.
Minority party leaders have many of the same resources for influencing their members that
majority party leaders have vis-à-vis the majority caucus. Included would be valuable committee
assignments, other forms of party patronage, access to party-controlled campaign funds, and
simply the interpersonal pressure that members of a group feel to contribute to collective goals.18
High levels of unity on major roll calls can help foster a coherent and favorable name brand for
the minority party, as well as for the partisan majority. Perhaps most important, party leaders do
not whip rank-in-file members in isolation from the broader legislative environment. Minority
party leaders may lack many of the formal prerogatives extended to the majority leadership, but
whipping efforts on the minority side of the aisle are often reinforced by the party’s allies in the
interest group community.
Consider the Windfall Profits proposal, which was a high pickup item for both
leaderships in June 1979. The provision was a substitute amendment offered by W. Henson
Moore, R-La., and James R. Jones, D-Ok. It was intended to weaken a windfall tax measure that
had been reported on a 20-16 vote by the Committee on Ways and Means earlier that month.
The oil industry staunchly opposed any new tax, but preferred the Moore-Jones proposal to the
18
We thank Rep. Dan Lipinski, D-Ill., for repeatedly emphasizing this very obvious, but nonetheless overlooked,
point in personal conversations.
18
committee bill. The whip count revealed deep divisions among chamber Democrats, largely
along ideological and regional lines. When the matter came to a roll call, Republican members
voted for the proposal by a margin of 146-10, and they were joined by 90 conservative and
moderate Democrats. The key factor behind House passage of the Moore-Jones substitute was
not the relative efficacy of the coalition-building efforts of GOP leaders. By most accounts, the
added support for the proposal derived from an intensive lobbying campaign orchestrated by the
oil industry. In gauging the relative effectiveness of the two whip systems, then, it is important
to keep in mind that party leaders do not lobby in a vacuum. In the contemporary Congress,
most major issues will activate a range of outside interest groups on both sides of the question.
Studies that purport to uncover the exercise of legislative influence by the majority or minority
party are really capturing the impact of the parties and of the interest groups that are allied with
them on a matter. More generally, the potential efficacy of lobbying operations on the minority
side means that scholarly theories and empirical tests about party influence need to consider the
minority, as well as the majority. Too often, studies of party leadership focus almost exclusively
on the majority party.19
Still, a closer examination of the coalition-building data in Tables 7A and 7B indicates
that the majority Democrats were particularly effective when the stakes were highest. On two of
the most significant party priorities, the minimum wage and the massive energy reform
legislation, the Democrats orchestrated impressive “come from behind” victories. The specific
questions related to the “youth differential” amendment to the minimum wage measure and the
natural gas pricing substitute.
Although both items were firmly in the “high pickup” range for
Democrats, the leadership prevailed after intensive lobbying campaigns aimed at retaining
wavering members. In addition, the two jointly polled items in our sample that were decided by
a single vote – the youth differential amendment and the procedure for considering the
conference report on the energy bill – were both won by the Democrats, a strong indicator of
effective lobbying by the majority. Indeed, it is useful at this point to consider in more depth
coalition-building efforts on the energy reform matter. By most accounts, the bill was the most
19
Krehbiel and Wiseman (2005) make precisely this point in their study of minority party committee assignments
during the Cannon era.
19
significant and hotly-contested piece of legislation during the Carter administration. And it was
the subject of more whip activity than any other single measure during 1977-80.20
The energy reform fight was launched early in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter and
quickly became the top domestic policy priority for Democratic leaders in both chambers.
During the previous Congress, efforts to enact an energy bill had floundered in the House,
largely because the decentralized committee system proved incapable of producing a coherent
proposal that could win on the floor (Oppenheimer, 1980; Jones and Strahan, 1985). As a result,
early in 1977 Speaker O’Neill established a temporary Ad Hoc Committee on Energy and
charged it with coordinating the activities of the standing committees with jurisdiction in the
area. Although Carter aggressively attempted to sell his energy program on Capitol Hill and to
the general public, opinion polls indicated that most Americans did not view passage of the
administration plan as critical. Within Congress, the issue evoked cross-cutting cleavages that
divided members along partisan, ideological, and regional/economic lines. In the House, O’Neill
devoted the full powers of his office to shepherding a version of the Carter plan to passage.
In late July 1977, as floor action neared, the Democratic whips conducted nose counts on
seven distinct questions, and within a week followed up with two more. The questions are
presented in Table 8. The first set of polled items concerned the rule, four likely amendments,
and the expected GOP motion to recommit, as well as passage of the measure as reported by the
ad hoc committee. The most significant issues were all subject to whip counts, indicating the
importance of the bill to the leadership and the precariousness of the coalition forming behind
the legislation. The key issue was natural gas pricing. It was the topic of two Democratic whip
questions (“Will you support the Ad Hoc Committee amendment on natural gas pricing?” “Will
you oppose any natural gas deregulation substitute amendment?”) and one nose count on the
GOP side (“Will you support the deregulation of new natural gas?”).
The coalition-building challenge confronting the leadership is summarized in Table 9 (as
well as Tables 7A and 7B for the jointly polled items). Because the two sets of polled items do
not completely overlap, Table 9 provides the actual roll calls cast by the opposing party as an
estimate of likely support from that side of the aisle (column 2), as well as the intra-party base
20
Our treatment of the energy policy fight draws in part on coverage provided in various issues of Congressional
Quarterly Weekly Report.
20
(“yes” and “leaning yes” responses on the relevant nose count) and the margin of victory or
defeat.
Notice first that only 140 Democrats were “yes” or “leaning yes” on the ad hoc
committee’s natural gas proposal, while 121 of the 142 Republicans who answered their party’s
whip call were against the initiative or leaning that way. After an intensive lobbying campaign
that featured personal intervention by O’Neill and (especially) Majority Leader James Wright,
D-Tex., the Democrats were able to defeat the main Republican alternative, an amendment
offered by Rep. Clarence Brown, R-Ohio, on a vote of 199-227. Based on whip counts from
both parties, the leadership could only count on 143 votes in the days leading up to the roll call.
The minimum necessary pickup was a full 70 votes, an enormous challenge for Democratic
leaders. Still, they managed to pick up 84 additional votes and prevailed on the floor by a
comfortable margin.
During this stage of the fight over energy reform, the Republicans won on three polled
items; the ad hoc committee’s proposed gasoline tax (which lost on the floor); an administrationback substitute on the gasoline tax sponsored by James J. Howard, D-N.J., (which also went
down to defeat); and a minor proposal from Walter Flowers, R-Ala., concerning electric power
plants (which was adopted). The natural gas item was the single most important issue, however.
Here, as well as on other major aspects of the floor fight, the position of the Democratic
leadership prevailed even though the whip counts indicated that O’Neill often needed to pick up
fifty or more votes.
After more than a year of bicameral conflict over the conference report, the energy bill
returned to the House floor during the waning days of the 95th Congress. At this point, the key
issue was procedural; whether or not to divide the package and consider the natural gas
provisions separately from the remainder of the conference report. Democratic leaders favored a
single vote; Republican supported separate consideration. The majority polled the matter on
October 4, 1978, asking for member positions on the previous question on the rule and on the
rule itself. Republicans began their whip count a week earlier, asking their members whether (1)
they would support an effort to bring down the proposed rule and thereby separate the package,
and (2) whether they would then vote against the natural gas portions of the conference report.
Based on the whip counts, O’Neill could count on 182 Democratic votes. If we factor in the 13
21
Republicans who had signaled to their own leadership that they would be supporting the
Democrats on procedure, the Speaker needed to pick up at least 12 more votes to win.
The lobbying endgame continued right down to the wire. The White House attempted to
help convince wavering Democrats to support O’Neill on the rule but congressional liaison was
never Jimmy Carter’s strong suit. Thomas “Lud” Ashley, the Democratic chair of the Ad Hoc
Committee on Energy, later described his experience working with the President during the floor
lobbying process.
I called Carter on one occasion…. I said, “Mr. President, … I’m going to lose
this natural gas bill unless I can get some guys to change their vote. And I have a
list of ten people that we can work with but we got to get ‘em and we got to get
‘em today.” He said, “It will be done. Thanks, Lud. Good-bye.” So I went to
Tip with the same list. I got back to my office and there was a call from the
White House and it was the President. I said, “What is it, Mr. President?” He
said, “There is a natural gas title that is being considered in the energy bill and I
have got to have your vote on it.” I said, “Does this sound familiar by any
chance, Mr. President? For crissakes. I called you twenty-five minutes ago.
How about crossing off the fellow at the top of the list and going from there? I
think you got me.”21
O’Neill and the whips were more effective. The day of the vote, as the roll call proceeded, it
became clear that the outcome could go either way. With the roll call tied at 206-206 and time
running out, the deciding vote was cast by Rep. Robert Carr, D-Mich., who earlier had answered
as “undecided” on all of the relevant whip counts. With O’Neill standing in the well of the
House, watching him closely, Carr voted in favor of the motion on the previous question for the
rule, the Democrats prevailed on procedure, and the conference report was adopted. By all
accounts, the lobbying efforts of the House Democratic leadership were pivotal to the outcome.
4. Conclusion
Our analysis of endgame lobbying on major floor roll calls in the House during 1977-80
provides clear evidence that parties and leaders can make a difference. Even on major issues
toward the final stages of the House legislative process, large portions of the membership remain
undecided about how to vote. As others have demonstrated, parties influence agenda setting and
the deliberations that occur in committee. But they also exert a significant impact on the process
21
As quoted in Farrell (2001), 506-7.
22
through which rank-and-file members develop positions on policy issues on the floor. Much of
what constitutes party influence, we believe, concerns the formation of preferences.
The 1990s transformation of legislative studies has shifted scholarly attention away from
member goals as theoretical primitives and toward member preferences as the central conceptual
building block. In the words of one prominent practitioner, the spatial model has become “the
workhorse theory of modern legislative studies” (Cox, 2001, pg. 189). Most applications of the
spatial model to the field, however, posit that the preferences of legislators are fixed and
exogenously determined. Not surprisingly, efforts to incorporate a significant role for parties in
these models have focused on formal prerogatives such as agenda control, preferential rights to
propose policy changes, the placement of parties within the temporal sequence of decision
making, committee assignment powers, and so on. However, if parties and leaders play a key
role in shaping the process of preference formation, then theories rooted in assumptions about
fixed or exogenously determined preferences are only going to take us so far toward
understanding the congressional parties.
An alternative approach would be to revisit the distinction between goals and
preferences, or at least to develop a more refined sense of what constitutes member preferences
in the legislative process. Social choice theorists define “preference” as an ordering of concrete
alternatives rather than as a point on an ideological scale or left-right continuum. The best
observational research about roll call decision making demonstrates persuasively that legislators
confront a range of potentially competing preference orderings as they go about their work
(Kingdon, 1973; Fenno, 1985). These discrete orderings emanate from overlapping subsets of
constituents, from the constellation of interest groups, from a legislator’s own views about good
public policy, from party leaders, and so forth. The roll calls that members cast result from a
complex cognitive aggregation of these potentially competing preference orders. In other words,
the preferences that members form over concrete alternatives during the legislative process are
induced preferences. Both conceptually and empirically, it is difficult to separate out the various
components. As a result, attempts to distinguish analytically between preferences and parties are
problematic, to say the least.
It is not at all clear to us, for instance, that party influence should be defined as a
divergence of policy outcomes from the preferences of the chamber median toward centrist
preferences within the majority caucus. If the positions of dozens of majority party members
23
often are in play right up to the occurrence of major floor votes, precisely what constitutes the
chamber median or centrist preferences within the majority caucus? Appropriate
conceptualizations and empirical tests of party influence, we believe, should emphasize the
movement of member positions over time.
The analysis of party influence in Congress also needs to pay more attention to the role of
the minority. If anything, the GOP leadership was more effective than were the majority
Democrats at whipping rank-and-file party members into line. The influence that minority party
leaders exert over the roll call decisions of their members may not be as pronounced following
the 1980s increase in party polarization. Or the influence of the majority leadership may have
increased to the point that it now dominates the coalition-building tactics of the minority. We
will have to extend our analysis of jointly polled items to more recent Congresses to address the
matter. But regardless of party attachments, a vote is a vote on Capitol Hill. Minority party
leaders have many of the resources for influencing rank-and-file members that are available to
the majority leadership. We cannot understand the role of party in Congress without considering
both the majority and the minority.
Finally, an important implication of this paper is that scholars need to gather more and
better data about the evolving positions of legislators. Vote-based measures of member ideology
can teach us a lot about the basic structure of the roll call record. Poole and Rosenthal (1997) is
rightly one of the three of four most influential scholarly books about Congress published over
the past decade. But the search for party effects in Congress – indeed, the study of influence in
the legislative process more generally – would benefit from systematic evidence about the
preferences of key actors prior to roll call choice. As we have demonstrated, whip count data are
one valuable source of pre-vote evidence about member positions. There are others. Similar
information can be gleaned from the votes that members cast in committee – committee roll calls
have been publicly available for all panels since 1970. The historical records kept by the
National Archives also include committee roll call data for some panels dating to the 19th
Century. VanDoren (1990) demonstrates how the creative use of hearings and other
congressional documents can be used to infer the content of member positions at the very
beginning of the legislative process. Accumulating such evidence will enable us to better track
how the policy preferences of members and other key actors develop over time, link the changes
that occur to leadership strategies and the broader political environment, and hopefully gauge in
24
a more systematic fashion precisely who exerts influence in the legislative process.
25
Table 1. Items subject to both Democratic and Republican whip counts, 1977-80
Item
Question
Roll Call Date
Roll Call Result
Winner
Financial Ethics
Previous question
motion
Final passage
2/2/1977
Democrats
Motion to concur to
Senate amendments
5/17/1977
267-153: D264-15;
R 3-138
205-217: D191-88;
R 14-129
221-177: D 192-70;
R 29-107
Final passage
6/7/1977
Democrats
Final passage
N/A
244-164: D 222-47;
R22-117
No roll call occurred
Substitute
amendment
Amendment
8/3/1977
Democrats
Amendment
9/15/1977
Amendment
9/15/1977
Amendment
10/5/1977
Final passage
10/6/1977
B-1 Bomber Funding
Amendment
10/20/1977
Agency for Consumer
Protection
Humphrey-Hawkins
(Full Employment)
Campaign Finance
Reform
ERA Deadline
Extension
Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance
Natural Gas
Conference Report
Panama Canal Treat
Implementation
Windfall Profits Tax
Final passage of
substitute
Final passage
2/8/1978
Rule
3/21/1978
Final passage
8/15/1978
Amendment
9/7/1978
Previous question
motion on rule
Final passage
10/13/1978
Substitute
amendment
Amendment
6/28/1979
Rule
10/17/1979
Substitute
amendment
Substitute bill
11/15/1979
199-227: D 72-210;
R 127-17
209-211: D 79-199;
R 130-12
264-161: D132-150;
R 132-11
223-193: D 97-178;
R 126-15
168-247: D 65-210;
D 103-37
257-163: D 221-59;
R 36-104
194-204: D 80-183;
R 114-21
189-227: D 172101; R 17-126
257-152: D 233-41;
R 24-111
198-209: D 198-69;
R 0-140
233-189: D 192-86;
R 41-103
176-200: D 64-191;
R 112-9
207-206: D 199-79;
R 8-127
224-202: D 189-80;
R 35-122
236-183: D 90-173;
R 146-10
197-214: D 133124; R 64-90
228-182: D 206-51;
R 22-131
234-166: D 99-158;
R 135-8
255-118: D 138-99;
R 117-19
Common Site
Picketing
Budget Targets
Hatch Act
Amendments
Universal Voter
Registration
Natural Gas Pricing
Minimum Wage:
Youth Differential
Minimum Wage: Tip
Credit
Minimum Wage:
Indexing
Labor Law Revision:
Equal Time
Labor Law Revision
Amtrak
Reorganization
PAC Contribution
Limits
Hospital Cost Control
Revenue Sharing
3/23/1977
9/15/1977
3/16/1978
6/21/1979
7/24/1979
11/13/1980
Republicans
Bipartisan
Republicans
Democrats
Republicans
Republicans
Democrats
Democrats
Democrats
Republicans
Democrats
Republicans
Democrats
Democrats
Democrats
Democrats
Republicans
Ambiguous
Democrats
Republicans
Republicans
26
Table 2. Distribution of responses on whip counts*
Poll Response
Democrats
Republicans
Yes
47.3%
64.0%
Leaning Yes
7.2%
3.1%
Undecided
16.1%
15.1%
Leaning No
3.9%
.9%
No
14.5%
7.7%
Other
11.1%
9.1%
* Observations for Budget Targets and Amtrak Reorganization are not included because the
Democratic and Republican leaderships did not endorse different positions.
27
Table 3. Roll Call Support for the party position by poll category
Item
Dem
Y/LY
205-7
Dem
U
26-0
Dem
N.LN
6-7
Dem
Other
26-2
GOP
L/LY
112-2
GOP
U
10-1
GOP
N/LN
5-0
GOP
Other
10-1
152-1
21-13
1-65
19-11
121-0
8-7
0-7
0-0
163-23
16-17
1-22
15-8
12-5
4-24
7-68
6-13
Hatch Act
Amendments
Natural Gas Pricing
174-6
20-9
7-25
26-8
97-2
7-3
5-8
11-9
129-5
34-7
13-44
35-17
119-2
7-6
0-7
1-2
Minimum Wage:
Youth Differential
Minimum Wage:
Tip Credit
Minimum Wage:
Indexing
Labor Law Rev:
Equal Time
Labor Law Revision
123-12
32-12
25-46
21-9
112-3
10-5
3-4
9-0
114-20
22-26
1-76
14-10
112-3
13-7
1-1
7-0
134-1
26-20
9-68
13-11
86-3
21-7
15-4
5-1
150-6
39-27
4-26
17-6
76-5
14-9
5-11
8-12
179-1
36-22
3-30
3-6
79-8
9-10
3-8
13-10
B-1 Bomber
Funding
Consumer
Protection
Humphrey-Hawkins
(Full Employment)
Campaign Finance
Reform
ERA Deadline
Extension
Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance
Natural Gas
Conference Report
Panama Canal Treat
Implementation
Windfall Profits Tax
138-3
17-10
12-63
20-9
87-1
13-5
5-13
14-4
138-19
26-25
3-54
11-7
118-1
8-6
2-11
0-0
172-2
40-9
4-33
21-1
103-6
10-12
0-7
2-1
165-17
19-22
4-26
17-9
123-0
13-0
2-0
4-0
166-2
16-21
4-58
8-6
71-0
9-5
16-33
7-3
104-18
49-18
10-16
37-15
70-2
28-5
2-2
20-0
167-11
14-9
14-58
6-2
66-2
38-5
12-1
14-2
144-6
22-20
6-39
17-15
83-5
22-15
5-15
12-0
124-10
20-18
4-37
25-25
89-0
30-5
7-3
20-2
78-28
27-28
18-60
13-11
56-7
16-19
12-21
6-17
147-12
31-19
13-13
18-7
91-2
14-4
6-12
23-4
99-15
34-25
13-45
16-16
73-1
34-4
10-0
21-3
64-29
13-30
11-52
13-30
78-2
11-10
11-6
17-1
Financial Ethics
Common Site
Picketing
Budget Targets
Amtrak
Reorganization
PAC Contribution
Limits
Hospital Cost
Control
Revenue Sharing
28
Table 4. Roll call retention by whip position and party*
Poll Position
Democrats
Republicans
93.6%
97.5%
60.6%
71.5%
15.9%
42.9%
63.3%
79.8%
71.1%
87.1%
Yes or Leaning Yes
Undecided
No or Leaning No
Other
All Categories
* Observations for Budget Targets and Amtrak Reorganization are not included because the
Democratic and Republican leaderships did not endorse different positions. Universal Voter
Registration is also excluded because no roll call occurred.
29
Table 5. Probit analysis of voting behavior of “undecideds”
Party
A
(n=1379)
B
(n=1368)
C
(n=1368)
.838***
.796***
.321**
-4.017***
-.260
Constituency
DW Nom 1
-2.110***
DW Nom 2
-.540***
Constant
-.569***
2.018***
-.199
Correctly
Predicted
.642
.700
0.727
PRE
.283
.397
0.450
Log likelihood
-890.966
-825.906
-771.017
McKelveyZavoina R-SQ
0.135
0.255
0.346
***p<.01, **p<.05 (one-tailed tests). Standard errors are adjusted for clustering on the poll/vote.
Note: Observations for Budget Targets and Amtrak Reorganization are excluded because the
party leaderships did not embrace different positions on the relevant questions. Universal Voter
Registration is also excluded because no roll call occurred. The number of observations is
slightly lower in models B and C due to missing values for the constituency ideology measure.
30
Table 6. Substantive significance of party across the three models
Model
Republican
Democrat
Difference
A
.285*
.606
.321
B
.300
.605
.305
C
.411
.538
.127
*Cell entries are the probability of casting a “pro-Democratic” roll call for undecided members
of each party under the alternative model specifications in Table 5, all other explanatory
variables held at their means.
0
Prob of Voting Dem Position
.2
.4
.6
.8
1
Figure 1. Party, “ideology” scores, and voting behavior of undecideds
-1
-.5
0
DW-NOMINATE 1
Rep
.5
1
Dem
31
Table 7A. Party coalition building: Democrats
Intra-Party
Base
Initial GOP
Support
Actual
Pickup
Margin
5
Minimum
Necessary
Pickup
-9
Financial Ethics
215
47
56
Common Site Picketing
154
7
51
44
-7
Hatch Act
191
13
1
40
39
Universal Voter
Registration
Natural Gas Pricing
131
3
83*
--
--
135
8
70
84
14
Min Wage Youth
Differential
Min Wage Tip Credit
141
7
62
63
1
135
2
76
24
-52
Min Wage Indexing
136
20
52
37
-15
Labor Equal Time
163
16
29
68
39
Labor Revision
185
12
14
60
46
B-1 Bomber
148
20
31
36
5
Consumer Protection
157
13
39
19
-20
Humphrey-Hawkins
176
8
21
73
52
Campaign Finance
Reform
ERA Extension
185
2
17
11
-6
169
50
-7
14
21
Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance
Natural Gas Conference
127
5
56
68
12
182
13
12
12
0
Panama Canal
154
21
39
49
10
Windfall Profits
139
10
61
34
-27
PAC Contributions
166
18
22
44
22
Hospital Costs
116
11
73
39
-34
Revenue Sharing
102
18
67
-2
-69
Item
*Based on the assumption that all 433 of the individuals in the House at the time of the whip count would have
participated in the roll call.
NOTE: Cell totals differ from those in Table 3 because of members taking poll positions but not voting and the
reverse.
32
Table 7B. Party coalition building: Republicans
Intra-Party
Base
Initial GOP
Support
Actual
Pickup
Margin
14
Minimum
Necessary
Pickup
80
Financial Ethics
116
23
-57
Common Site Picketing
122
68
21
27
6
Hatch Act
101
33
70
30
-40
Universal Voter
Registration
Natural Gas Pricing
123
72
22*
--
--
121
57
36
21
-15
Min Wage Youth
Differential
Min Wage Tip Credit
116
72
23
21
-2
117
77
19
70
51
Min Wage Indexing
90
79
40
54
14
Labor Equal Time
83
30
95
55
-40
Labor Revision
90
33
87
40
-47
B-1 Bomber
90
78
32
26
-6
Consumer Protection
119
58
31
50
19
Humphrey-Hawkins
113
37
55
2
-53
Campaign Finance
Reform
ERA Extension
128
30
46
51
5
71
62
78
56
-22
Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance
Natural Gas Conference
78
29
82
69
-13
69
72
66
65
-1
Panama Canal
88
46
79
68
-11
Windfall Profits
89
41
80
106
26
PAC Contributions
95
28
82
59
-23
Hospital Costs
81
61
59
92
33
Revenue Sharing
96
71
20
88
68
Item
*Based on the assumption that all 433 of the individuals in the House at the time of the whip count would have
participated in the roll call.
NOTE: Cell totals differ from those in Table 3 because of members taking poll positions but not voting and the
reverse.
33
Table 8. Whip counts on the National Energy Act, 1977-78
Date
7/26/1977
7/27/1977
7/27/1977
7/27/1977
7/27/1977
7/27/1977
7/27/1977
8/1/1977
8/1/1977
8/5/1977
9/19/1978
10/4/1978
10/4/1978
Date
7/27/1977
8/2/1977
8/2/1977
9/28/1978
9/28/1978
Questions Polled by Democrats
Will you vote for the previous question on the rule to accompany H.R.
8444, National Energy Act?
Will you support the Ad Hoc Committee amendment on natural gas
pricing?
Will you oppose any natural gas deregulation substitute amendment?
Will you support the Ad Hoc Committee amendment on business user
taxes?
Will you support the Ad Hoc Committee amendment on the gasoline tax?
Will you oppose the Republican recommit motion?
Will you vote for final passage of the bill? (pre amdts)
Will you support the Howard gasoline tax amendment?
Will you oppose the Jones amendment on plowback of crude oil tax
receipts to oil producers?
Will you vote for final passage of H.R. 8444, the National Energy Act?
(post amdts)
Will you support the Natural Gas Bill as reported by the Energy
Conference Committee?
Will you vote for the previous question on a rule combining the five
energy reports into a single package?
Will you vote for the rule combining the five energy conference reports
into a single package?
Questions Polled by Republicans
Will you support the deregulation of new natural gas?
Will you support the motion by Cong. Flowers to strike Sec. 548 of the
energy bill, H.R. 8444, which, if enacted, would cause undue delay in
construction of all electric generating plants and transmission facilities?
Will you support the Republican substitute energy bill, H.R. 8555?
Will you support an effort to separate the Natural Gas Bill from the rest
of the energy package?
If there is a separate vote on Natural Gas – Will you vote for or against it?
34
Table 9. Party coalition building on the National Energy Act
A. Democrats
Item
Prev Ques Rule
Ad Hoc Nat Gas
Nat Gas Subst
Ad Hoc Business
Ad Hoc Gasoline Tax
Motion to Recommit
Passage (pre-amend)
Howard Amdt
Jones Amdt
Passage (post-amend)
Nat Gas Conf
Prev Ques Rule Conf
Rule on Conf Rept
GOP roll calls in
Support of Dems
5
--*
17
9
2
3
-6
15
13
-8
--
Intra-Party Base on
Poll
211
140
135
114
77
179
173
65
131
220
238
182
161
Actual
Margin
37
-14
11
-160
8
--129
12
33
-0
--
Dem roll calls in
Support of Reps
72
127
29
79
--
Intra-Party Base on
Poll
121
94
106
69
68**
Actual
Margin
-15
48
-64
-1
--
B. Republicans
Item
Nat Gas Subst
Flowers Amdt
GOP Subst
Rule Conf
Separate Nat Gas
* “--“ indicates that a roll call directly linked to the question did not occur.
** The cell entry for this GOP poll is the sum of “no” plus “leaning no” on the question as posed.
35
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