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UBC Theses and Dissertations

Crossing the aisle : bipartisan voting in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1973-2021 Liaw, Brendan

Abstract

Over the last 50 years polarization and partisanship have increased both in Congress and among the public, leading to governance characterized by a lack of compromise, incivility, legislative gridlock, and worsening policy outcomes. Despite such polarization and partisanship, some scholars argue that bipartisan lawmaking is alive and well. Drawing inspiration from Fenno’s model of Congress, this paper uses data covering roll calls, electoral returns, lawmaker characteristics, and ideology to investigate what drives minority party lawmakers to cast bipartisan votes in the US House of Representatives from 1973-2021. Regression analyses show that ideology, district partisanship, and characteristics like seniority, gender, and previous legislative experience do not influence minority party lawmakers to cast bipartisan votes on “hard” bills. Instead, the paper finds that ideologically moderate minority party lawmakers, as measured by first dimension NOMINATE scores, cast more bipartisan votes on “easy” bills. Second dimension NOMINATE scores yield diverging results, as Democratic lawmakers with higher second dimension NOMINATE scores cast more bipartisan votes while Republican lawmakers with higher second dimension NOMINATE scores cast fewer bipartisan votes. Furthermore, Democratic lawmakers in swing districts are more likely to cast easy bipartisan votes across all Congresses and Republicans in recent Congresses. Other factors like gender, seniority, and previous legislative experience do not influence easy bipartisan voting. Additionally, this paper also finds that instances of bills with insufficient majority party support and fewer than 20, 30, or 40 minority party votes are rare. This study sheds light on which factors drive minority party lawmakers to engage in bipartisan voting in the US House of Representatives.

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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International