Yea or Nay: Do Legislators Benefit by Voting Against Their Party?

• Author: Christopher P. Donnelly
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12233
• Published date: 01 August 2019
• Date: 01 August 2019

421

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, 44, 3, August 2019

DOI: 10.1111/lsq.12233

CHRISTOPHER P. DONNELLY

Drexel University

Yea or Nay: Do Legislators Benefit by

Voting Against Their Party?

This article asks whether legislators are able to reap electoral benefits from

opposing their party on one or more high-profile issues. Using data from a na-

tional survey in which citizens are asked their own positions on seven high-profile

issues voted on by the U.S. Senate, as well as how they believe their state’s two sen-

ators have voted on these issues, I find that senators generally do not benefit from

voting against their party. Specifically, when a senator deviates from her party,

the vast majority of out-partisans nonetheless persist in believing that the senator

voted with her party anyhow; and while the small minority of out-partisans who

are aware of her deviation are indeed more likely to approve of and vote for such

a senator, there are simply too few of these correctly informed citizens for it to

make a meaningful difference for the senator’s overall support.

Within the study of the contemporary Congress, it is a well-

established fact th at the best predictor of how a legislator wil l vote

is the party w ith which she affiliate s (see, e.g., Lee 2009; Poole and

Rosenthal 2007; Sinclair 2006). At the same time, however, there

are still in stances in which indiv idual legislators vote against their

party’s position, especially if they have an electoral incentive to

do so (Cain, Ferejohn, and Fiorina 1987; Fenno 1978; Harden

2013; Mayhew 1974). Indeed, previous research has found that

members of Congress ( MCs) who represent distr icts that favor the

other party or are evenly split between the two parties are more

likely to deviate from the party line than are MCs who hail from

districts that are electorally safe for their party (Ansolabehere,

Snyder, and Stewart 2001; Bovitz and Carson 2006; Erikson 1990;

Hurley and Kerr 2000; Mayhew 2011).

Bolstering these findings, scholars have also shown that mem-

bers who are less electorally safe make more of an effort to deem-

phasize their party label when communicating with constituents

© 2019 Washington University in St. L ouis

422Christopher P. Donnelly

(Lipinski 2004) and that candidates for Congress affiliating with the

district’s less-favored party, whether they are incumbents or chal-

lengers, take more centrist ideological positions relative to coparti-

sans running in districts in which that party is favored (Ansolabehere,

Snyder, and Stewart 2001; Burden 2004; Stone and Simas 2010).

From this well-established body of research arises a criti-

cal question that is the primary focus of this article: Do legisla-

tors representing marginal states or districts in which their party

is not favored actually benefit from taking steps to differentiate

themselves from their own party? That is, does employing such a

strategy win over at least some voters of the opposite party resid-

ing in their constituency? Of course, in order for this to happen,

there are two key conditions that must hold: (1) citizens must be

aware of the fact that their legislator has deviated from her party

on some issues; and (2) the voters at whom this strategy is targeted

must meaningfully care about the fact that a legislator has done

so. That is, the opposite-party citizens who should in theory be

pleased with the legislator’s party-deviating actions must become

more approving of the legislator and, more importantly, be willing

to vote for the legislator once she comes up for re-election.

In this article, I assess whether these two conditions hold.

Simply put, I ask whether legislators can in fact benefit among

some opposite-party voters by casting moderate votes whereby

they deviate from their own party’s position.

Key Findings and Results

Using data from the 2006 Cooperative Congressional

Election Study (CCES) in which citizens are asked their own po-

sitions on seven high-profile issues voted on by the U.S. Senate

during the 109th Congress (2005–06), as well as their perceptions

of how each of their two senators voted, I find that senators only

marginally benefit among opposite-party constituents when they

vote against their own party. Specifically, when a senator devi-

ates from the party line on one or more high-profile votes, oppo-

site-party constituents comprise the subset of voters least likely

to be aware of such behavior by the legislator. Moreover, among

the small subgroup of opposite-party constituents who do know

about a legislator’s party-deviating roll-call behavior, the uptick

in electoral support brought about by such knowledge translates

into a relatively small elec toral benefit, with the overall size of the

electoral support gained by the legislator being quite minimal.

423Do Legislators Benet by Voting Against Their Party?

More briefly, this article also explores the related question

of whether a legislator’s decision to break with her party carries

negative consequences for her support among copartisan constit-

uents who disagree with her actions.

In this regard, I find that while a party-bucking senator’s

copartisan constituents who disagree with the senator’s posi-

tion have a difficult time identifying party-deviating behavior by

a senator, they are more likely to notice such actions than their

opposite-party counterparts. Further, when such copartisans

do notice, they become far less likely to positively evaluate the

senator’s job performance. Ulti mately, my analysis of same-par ty

constituents rais es the possibility that party-buck ing behavior on

the part of a senator may make her more v ulnerable to being chal-

lenged for renomination by a candid ate who hews more closely to

party orthodoxy (see Brady, Han, and Pope 2007). At the same

time, because the 2006 CCES does not survey voters about their

preferences in any congressional primary elections, the notion

that lower approval ratings of a party-deviating senator among

copartisans will in fact increase the likelihood that the senator

receives a future intraparty challenge is at best speculative and

should therefore be taken with caution.

Taken together, then, my results lead to the unambiguous

conclusion that a senator bucking her party on one or more key

issues is a largely ineffective strategy for garnering more votes

from out-partisans and, at the same time, offers speculative but

nonetheless plausible evidence that it might in fact cause a sena-

tor to lose support in a future bid for renomination.

Interestingly, such findings extracted from survey data col-

lected in the midst of the 2006 general election appear to be in

line with much of what we have observed in the five election cy-

cles that have followed, as the succeeding decade has seen sev-

eral re-ele ction losses by moderate senators representi ng states in

which their par ty is not favored, as well as a nontrivial number of

serious primary challenges—some of which have succeeded—to

senators who compile moderate voting records.

What Do Voters Know About How Their Legislators Vote?

Limitations of Previous Research

Recall that the previous section outlined two necessary con-

ditions that must hold in order to make a party-deviating strategy

by legislators effective in achieving its goal. First, citizens must